Ifteafeirtgs UC-NRLF SPECIMENS OF EXPOSITION GIFT OF Professor G.R.Noyes SPECIMENS OF EXPOSITION SELECTED AND EDITED BY HAMMOND LAMONT, A.B. INSTRUCTOR IN ENGLISH tit HARVARD UNIVERSITY, NEW YORK HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 1896 COPYRIGHT, 1894, . l ,BY Y KOLT & CO. GIFT OF ess<3-/ G ''K C PREFACE. THIS book, though compiled primarily for college classes in English Composition, should also be of use in the most advanced classes of preparatory schools. Both in school and in college the pupil ought to be familiar, not only with those models of style which he himself must analyze, but with those from which the teacher draws illustrations for lectures and criticisms. Such necessary familiarity is, as a matter of fact, im- possible, unless the pupil own the book, or books, con- taining thesje models ; but, unluckily for his pocket, no one volume, indeed, no one writer, either appeals to all interests or exhibits all excellences. These prac- tical difficulties, in so far as they touch argumentative writing, have been overcome in Professor George P. Baker's " Specimens of Argumentation ; " and this compilation attempts to overcome them for another kind of writing exposition. By means of typical ex- positions from such leading branches of study as science, government, history, economics, philosophy, theology, philology, and literature, the editor has tried to reach different tastes and show methods of handling different sorts of matter. For valuable suggestions in the preparation of this volume thanks are due Professor Barrett Wendell, of Harvard University, Professor George Rice Carpenter, 884192 i ii PREFACE. of Columbia College, and especially Mr. John Hays Gardiner, of Harvard. In reprinting these selections it has generally seemed best to take no liberties with the original texts. Hence the punctuation is not perfectly uniform throughout the book. CAMBRIDGE, MASS., July 27, 1895. TABLE OF CONTENTS. PACK Preface i Introduction v Development of a Plan I V The Steam-Engine George C. V. Holmes. 9 /The Physical Basis of Life Thomas Henry Huxley. 22 v The Character and Policy of Charles II. John Richard Green. 40 The Interpretation of the Constitution .James Bryce. 46 The Graeco-Italian Stock Christian Matthias Theodor Mommsen 73 The American Love of Freedom Edmund Burke. 95 The Division of Labor Adam Smith. 104 The Doctrines of Spinoza .Josiah Royce. 117 Peace : What it is .John Frederick Denison Maurice. 133 The Real Problem of the Unemployed " The Nation ". 144 Albery's " Apple Blossoms " William Archer. 148 V Wordsworth Matthew Arnold. 154 iii INTRODUCTION, i. WHAT EXPOSITION IS. IN this compilation the editor has followed those who divide writing roughly into four kinds, exposition, argumentation, description, and narration. A glance at these specimens shows that he has taken the term exposition broadly enough to include all writing, the chief purpose of which is to explain. For instance, the first selection is an exposition, or explanation, of the construction of the steam-engine ; the second is Huxley's explanation of the nature of protoplasm ; the third, Green's exposition of the character and policy of Charles the Second ; the last, Arnold's exposition of the place and value of Wordsworth's poetry. The student, then, adopting this somewhat loose definition, might, when asked for an exposition, expound, or ex- plain, some mechanical or chemical process, such as the operation of a dynamo or the reaction by which oxygen and hydrogen are produced from water ; he might ex- pound some theory or doctrine in religion, science, philosophy, economics, or literature, such as the doc- trine of the atonement, the theory of evolution, Kant's idealism, Mill's theory of rent, or an opinion of Ten- vi INTRODUCTION. nyson's " Idylls of the King ; " he might expound the rules for baseball, the uses of the Greek optative mood, the policy of Charlemagne, the working of the feudal system, the powers of the English cabinet, or the Democratic attitude on the tariff ; or he might, by expounding the purport of an essay or book, make a sort of exposition usually called a summary, or synop- sis. If, however, the student wishes, for the practice, to stick rigidly to exposition, he will need a definition somewhat sharper than that above. The common dis- tinction, then, between exposition and argumentation is that exposition is intended to explain, to make men understand ; but argumentation, not merely to make them understand, but to convince them that a certain belief is sound, a certain course of action desirable. This distinction is easy enough to apply in some cases but hard in others. A man may, for instance, try merely to explain the principles of free trade ; obvi- ously he will be expounding. If, on the other hand, he tries, not only to make his readers comprehend these principles, but, more than that, to convince them that free trade is beneficial, he will evidently be arguing. And yet, what purports to be simply an exposition of the principles of free trade, may readily have the prac- tical effect of an argument for it. To decide whether such a piece is argumentation or exposition is next to impossible. Thus it happens that, although in most cases the distinction is clear, yet exposition sometimes shades so imperceptibly into argumentation, that no man can draw a hard and fast line between them. IN TROD UC TIOM v jj Sometimes also the usual distinction between expo- sition and description, that exposition deals with the subject in general, with a class, but description with an individual, is hard to apply. The difficulty is, moreover, increased by the confusion between the rather technical use of description in books on rhetoric and the common use, which frequently makes the word do duty for exposition and narration. Strictly speak- ing, an article on the horse in general would indubi- tably be exposition, and an article on the appearance and characteristics of some one horse, Sunol, for in- stance, would as indubitably be description. This dis- tinction is excellently illustrated by Professor John F. Genung in his " Practical Elements of Rhetoric." ' Fr<5m an encyclopedia article on the oak he quotes an expository passage beginning as follows : " Most of the trees belonging to the oak family are remarkable for their thick and rugged bark and for the great abundance of tannin which it contains. They have large and strong roots, penetrating very deeply or extending very far horizontally. The trunks are distinguished for their massiveness, and for the weight, strength, and in most cases, the durability of their wood. Their branches are strong and irregular, and form a broad head. The buds are fitted for a climate with severe winters, the plaited or folded leaves being covered by imbricate external scales, and often still further protected by a separate downy scale surround- ing each separate leaf. The leaves are plane and alternate, and usually supported by a footstalk, at the base of which are two slender scales or stipules, which for the most part fall off as the leaf expands." In contrast is the description of an individual oak from Tennyson's " Merlin and Vivien : " 1 Page 385. Viii INTRODUCTION. " A storm was coming, but the woods were still, And in the wild wood of Broceliande, Before an oak, so hollow, huge, and old It look'd a tower of ruin'd mason-work, At Merlin's feet the wily Vivien lay." In these examples the distinction is clear enough, because the individuals vary so widely, that each may have features or traits not common to all of the class; nevertheless we are perplexed, when the individuals are so nearly alike, that a description of one serves as an exposition of the class. A description of an indi- vidual red squirrel, for instance, and an exposition treating of red squirrels in general might be so written, that to tell surely which was which would puzzle the sharpest hair-splitter. The distinction between exposition and narration is much like that between exposition and description : exposition deals with a class of events ; narration, with individual events. You would, for example, use exposition in telling the general process by which bills pass Congress ; narration, in telling the course of the so-called Wilson Tariff Bill. Here again the dis- tinction, though usually clear, now and then becomes imperceptible. Yet, even if the student were able always to dis- criminate, and if, for the practice, he wished to stick wholly to exposition, he could scarcely succeed. In ex- pounding his opinion of George Eliot's novels, he might like to strengthen it here and there by a little argu- mentation ; in expounding the construction of the bicycle, he might, for illustration, describe - c ^me one IK TROD UCTION. IX machine ; in expounding the policy of Charlemagne, he might, for clearness, be compelled to narrate some of Charlemagne's deeds. Such deviations are* not, however, blunders ; quite the contrary. The student does enough, if he makes the exposition predominate. Indeed, in most books and essays, the mixture of the kinds of writing is so common, that it has inevitably crept even into this volume, compiled expressly to illustrate expository style. Arnold's essay on Words- worth, though in the main expository, contains argu- mentative passages, such as that running from page 1 66 into 171, where Arnold maintains Wordsworth's superiority. The exposition of the steam-engine, pages 9-21, includes what may be called a description sub- ordinated to the purpose of expounding steam-engines in general. Green's exposition of the character of Charles contains, page 41, a description of the king's person. Finally, Adam Smith, to show how the division of labor leads to the invention of machinery, relates, page 113, the narrative of the invention of the sliding- valve. We may conclude, then, that unadulterated ex- position is seldom found in any work of considerable length. We give the name, however, to that writing in which the passages of argumentation, description, and narration are subordinated to exposition. II. STICKING TO THE POINT. IN spite of the admixture of other kinds of writing, these selections illustrate the principles which anyrhet- X INTRO D UC TIOM oric lays down as tending to the chief excellence of exposition clearness. For observing these principles, such as unity of purpose, logical division and arrange- ment of material, and the illustration of general state- ments by specific examples, there are no cut-and-dried rules. The most a man can do is to get a clear un- derstanding of the nature of the difficulties, study the possible methods of solution, and for the result trust to care and tact. Take the first of these cardinal virtues, unity neglect of it, the introduction of irrelevant facts, is a common cause of obscurity in exposition. Yet there is no sub- stitute for intelligence, no formula, which will enable a man invariably to put in everything which belongs in and leave out everything which belongs out. Of course with any subject the student can go a certain distance without hesitation : some matter he must on no account omit ; some he must on no account admit. To explain the game of tennis clearly, he must cer- tainly tell about the court and he must as certainly not wander off to the subject of golf links. But be- tween these extremes lies the debatable ground, matter more or less closely connected with the subject. How much of it shall go in depends upon the exhaustiveness of the treatment. For example, a short exposition of the game of tennis could give little or no space to the various strokes ; yet a book would have room for them. In such cases the only way to decide is to consider each point in relation to the scale on which the whole is planned. In these decisions the judgment may be greatly INI^ROD UC TION. x i helped, if the student will begin composition by an effort to put the gist of the whole exposition into a single sentence, and will then keep that sentence in mind. The experiment, though not always successful, is worth trying, because it forces the student to do what he might otherwise fail to do, consider seriously the limits of the subject and the significance of the parts. When he endeavors to put into a single sentence the essence of a composition, say of five hundred or a thousand words, he is likely to discover that some things which he thought pertinent are after all unes- sential ; and that others which he regarded as of little moment are really vital. This knowledge makes it comparatively easy to secure unity. Such a " key-sentence " if the compound may be allowed will often, of course, be a definition, but not necessarily from a dictionary. The " key " for an exposition of baseball might, for instance, be some such definition as this : Baseball is a field game, played with bat and ball, by eighteen men, nine on a side. The first article in this volume has as its "key- sentence" a definition which appears on page 10, lines 23-25 : " A steam-engine may be defined as an apparatus for doing work by means of heat applied to water." Sometimes the " key " may indicate the plan or purport of the exposition, as does the following sentence, page 24, lines 25-30, which outlines the whole of the selec- tion from Huxley : " I propose to demonstrate to you that, notwithstanding these x ii INTRODUCTION. apparent difficulties, a threefold unity namely, a unity of power or faculty, a unity of form, and a unity of substantial composition does pervade the whole living world. As in these two examples, a writer can frequently use the " key-sentence " in the body of the exposition itself. At times it may make a fitting conclusion, as in Arnold's essay on Wordsworth, page 180, lines 2 1-24 : "They (Wordsworth's poems) will co-operate with the benign tendencies in human nature and society, and will, in their degree, be efficacious in making men wiser, better, and happier." Often, however, the sentence supplies an excellence rare in undergraduate themes, a direct introduction. A good example is furnished in the extract from Mommsen, page 73, lines 1-4 : " During the period when the Indo-Germanic nations, which are now separated, still formed one stock, speaking the same lan- guage, they attained a certain stage of culture, and they had a vocabulary corresponding to it." Another example is the beginning of the chapter from Adam Smith, page 104, lines 1-5 : " The greatest improvement in the productive powers of labor, and the greater skill, dexterity, and judgment with which it is anywhere "directed or applied, seem to have been the effects of the division of labor." But whether the " key-sentence " is a definition or not ; whether it is used as an introduction or conclu- sion, or is not used at all in the exposition itself ; the fact remains that the student who writes one and then bears it in mind, will be much more likely to stick to the point. INTRODUCTION. x iii III. DIVISION OF MATERIAL. SINCE the mind grasps a subject more surely, if but one phase is presented at a time, the material for an exposition should be divided into groups, each treating of but one phase. This general admonition will be rendered more definite by an examination of the accom- panying selections. In the first, pages 10 and n set forth the theory upon which the steam-engine is based ; pages 12 and 13 furnish a brief preliminary statement of the way in which the simple cylinder and piston are modified in practice. Then follow the details, which are lucid be- cause the writer has divided them into two groups. Into the first, pages 13-15, he has put everything about the apparatus for generating steam ; and into the second, pages 16-21, everything about the manage- ment of the steam afterward. Furthermore, the first group is subdivided into smaller groups : the boiler, page 13, lines 24-32 ; the furnace, page 14, lines 1-13, and page 15, lines 1-17; and the steam-pipe and safety-valve, page 15, lines 21-29. In like manner the second large group is subdivided : the cylinder, page 17, lines 4-8; the piston, lines 8-10 ; the connections with the fly-wheel, lines 10-22, and all of page 19 ; and the valve-box, pages 20 and 21. The same careful division is to be found in the other xiv INTRODUCTION. selections. Perhaps the best example of all is the bit from Burke's Speech on Conciliation with America, pages 95-103. After the introductory paragraph Burke separates his matter into six parts : the descent of the Americans, their form of government, religion, man- ners, education, and remoteness from the seat of English government. To each of these he devotes a paragraph. In the first he says all he has to say on descent ; and so on : there is no confusion, no slipping into a later paragraph matter belonging in an earlier. Every point is distinct. In order to make such clear divisions in his own material, the student should understand drawing plans. To this end a study of the pages immediately following this introduction is profitable. Here Arnold's essay on Wordsworth is outlined, at first briefly, and then more fully. In the first plan, pages i and 2, the six leading parts of the essay appear, marked with the large Roman numerals, I, II, III, etc. ; in the second plan, pages 2 and 3, the more important of the subor- dinate ideas, marked with capitals, A, B, C, etc., are grouped under the leading heads ; in the third, pages 3-5, less important ideas, marked a, b, c, etc., are added ; and so on, until in the fourth plan, pages 5-8, the outline is fairly complete. In each case the sub- ordinate ideas are carefully classified under the main points to which they most closely relate. For example, in all the plans the heading V marks the ideas regard- ing Wordsworth's superior power. In plan II, page 3, lines 3-6, two subordinate ideas bearing on this same matter appear as follows : INTRODUCTION. xv " V. His superior power is found in A. His noble and profound application of ideas to life; B. His unique and unmatchable style." In plan III, page 4, lines 16-32, and page 5, lines 1-3, seven minor points are added : " Poetry is at bottom a criticism of life from the point of view of morals ; " " A poetry of revolt against moral ideas is a poetry of revolt against life;" "Though other poets revolt against moral ideas, or are content with subordinate things, Wordsworth criticises life according to moral ideas ; " " His style is often ponderous and pompous ; " " Yet it often has the subtle turn and heightening of the best poets ; " " It has also a noble plainness, like that of Burns ; " " In spite of these suggestions of the style of other poets, Wordsworth's style is, nevertheless, unique and unmatchable." The first three of these obviously explain A, " His noble and profound appli- cation of ideas to life ; " the four last relate more closely to his style, and therefore are grouped under B. The arrangement of the seven points is, then, as follows : " V. His superior power is found in A. His noble and profound application of ideas to life. For a. Poetry is at bottom a criticism of life from the point of view of morals ; b. A poetry of revolt against moral ideas is a poetry of revolt against life ; c. Though other poets revolt against moral ideas, or are content with subordinate things, Wordsworth criticises life according to moral ideas. B. His style, which is a. Often ponderous and pompous, b. Yet often has the subtle turn and heightening of the best poets ; c. It has also a noble plainness, like that of Burns, xvi INTRODUCTION. d. In spite of these suggestions of the style of other poets, Wordsworth's style is, nevertheless, unique and unmatchable." The student will find it excellent practice to draw similar plans of some of the other selections, particu- larly "The Steam- Engine," page 9; "The Physical Basis of Life," 22 ; " The Interpretation of the Consti- tution," 46 ; " The American Love of Freedom," 95 ; and " The Division of Labor," 104. When once he has mastered the principle upon which a plan is drawn, he will be able to lay out his own work intelligently. Of mechanical devices to assist in this division of material, none is better than that suggested by Professor Barrett Wendell in his " English Compo- sition," l to put each main heading on a separate sheet of paper or card. This done, the subordinate head- ings can be jotted down on their proper cards, till the plan is finished. An exposition of the game of base- ball might, for instance, be planned with the three following main headings upon separate cards : I. The accessories of the game. II. The positions of the players. III. The process of play. The first card could be filled out thus, with points re- lating wholly to the accessories of the game : I. The accessories of the game. A. The field. B. The bat. C. The ball. This outline could be still further developed, in the following way : 165. INTRODUCTION. XVii I. The accessories of the game. A. The field. a. Shape. b. Dimensions. c. Fixtures. 1. Bases. 2. Baselines. 3. Pitcher's box. 4. Batter's box. 5. Back-stop. B. The bat. a. Shape. b. Size. c. Weight. d. Material. C. The ball. a. Shape. b. Size. c. Weight. d. Material. Then the headings on the other two cards could be similarly treated. By this study of the plans of the various selections and by work on his own plans the student will soon learn that each exposition offers a problem of which there are likely to be several solutions ; and that the clearest of them may be reached by adherence to no minute rules, but to the broad principle that matters closely related should be kept together. 1 1 Wendell's " English Composition," page 135. 2 INTRODUCTION. IV. GROUPING OF DIVISIONS. SOMETIMES the very process of division makes it evident at once that there is but one order for the groups. For example, when the author of " The Steam- Engine " separated his material into four parts, the theory, the general application of that theory in prac- tice, the details relating to the production of steam, and those relating to the use of it, he could not for a moment doubt that clearness demanded the arrange- ment of groups in the order named. Likewise when Burke traced the American love of freedom to six sources, descent, form of government, religion, man- ners, education, and remoteness, he naturally con- sidered first the first of these causes, descent. But if the division does not obviously settle the order, the writer must further exercise his ingenuity in studying it out. In this task he must remember that since in exposition the chief aim is clearness, he should proceed from the simple to the complex. Thus Green, pages 40-45, considers first the .character of Charles > then the policy, an understanding of which involves a knowledge of the character. Bryce, in his chapter on the interpretation of the Constitution, pages 46-72, has three headings : the authorities entitled to interpret; the principles followed ; and the checks on abuses of the interpreting power. Though this arrangement does not at once seem inevitable, a little examination proves INTRODUCTION. xi x that the checks cannot be understood, until the author- ities and principles are known. This principle of pro- ceeding from the simple to the complex determines the order of the three divisions of an exposition of base- ball, given in section III : for the positions of the players cannot be made clear, until the reader knows something about at least one accessory of the game, the field ; and the process of play cannot be under- stood, until the accessories and the positions of the piayers are explained. If clearness may be secured equally well in two or three different ways, then that should be adopted which, by bringing the most important group at the end, gives force. Thus Huxley, in his ex- position of the nature of protoplasm, pages 22-39, speaks first of power, then of form, and last of composition, because the substance is of more con- sequence than power or form. Burke, in considering the causes of the American love of freedom, pages 95- 103, discusses last the remoteness of America, because " no contrivance can prevent the effect of " this cause. Adam Smith, in treating the results of the division of labor,^ increase in dexterity, the saving of time, and the invention of machinery, puts the invention of machinery last, because that, more than anything else, has " facilitated and abridged " labor. In arranging the groups the device of the separate cards will be of much value ; for the cards can be shifted, until the writer has done his best to secure both clearness and force. XX INTRODUCTION. V. ILLUSTRATION BY EXAMPLES. NECESSARY equally to clearness and force is the illus< tration of general statements by particular examples ; for' abstractions produce little or no effect, till trans* lated into concrete terms. If the writer himself does not translate, the reader must; and this task makes hard reading of passages like the following : ' "The Imagination I consider either as primary, or secondary. The primary Imagination I hold to be the living power and prime agent of all human perception, and as a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I AM. The secondary Imagination I consider as an echo of the former, co- existing with the conscious will, yet still as identical with the primary in the kind of its agency, and differing only in degree, and in the mode of its operation. It dissolves, diffuses, dissi- pates, in order to re-create ; or where this process is rendered im- possible, yet still at all events it struggles to idealize and to unify. It is essentially vital, even as all objects (as objects) are essentially fixed and dead. " FANCY, on the contrary, has no other counters to play with but fixities and defihites. The fancy is indeed no other than a mode of memory emancipated from the order of time and space ; while it is blended with, and modified by, that empirical phenom- enon of the will, which we express by the word Choice. But equally with the ordinary memory the fancy must receive all its materials ready made from the law of association." Contrast with this the advantage of the examples in Professor Royce's treatment of a subject equally ab- struse, pages 122124 : 1 Coleridge, " Biographia Literaria," end of Chapter XIII. INTRODUCTION. Xxi "Technicalities aside, this doctrine is essentially founded upon what Spinoza regards as the axiom that everything in the world must be either explained by its own nature, or by some higher nature. You explain a thing when you comprehend why it must be what it is. Thus, for instance, in geometry, you know that all the diameters of any one circle must be precisely equal, and you know that this is so, because you see why it must be so. The diameters are drawn in the circle and through the centre of it, and the circle has a certain nature, a structure, a make, a build, whereby, for instance, you distinguish it from an oval or a square. This bund, this make of the circle, it is that forces the diameters to be equal. They can't help being equal, being drawn through the centre of a curve which has no elongation, no bulge outwards in one direction more than another, but which is evenly curved all around. The nature of the circle, then, at once forces the diameters to be equal, pins them down to equality, hems in any rebellious diameter that should try to stretch out farther than the others, and also explains to the reason of a geometer just why this result follows. My example is extremely dry and sim- ple, but it will serve to show what Spinoza is thinking of. He says now, as something self-evident, that anything in the world which doesn't directly contain its own explanation must be a part of some larger nature of things which does explain it, and which, accordingly, forces it to be just what it is. For instance, to use my own illustration, if two mountains had precisely the same height, as the diameters of a circle have precisely the same length, we should surely have to suppose something in the nature of the physical universe which forced just these two mountains to have the same height. But, even so, as things actually are, we must suppose that whatever is or happens, in case it is not a self- evident and necessary thing, must have its explanation in some higher and larger nature of things. Thus, once more, you your- self are either what you are by virtue of your own self-evident and self-made nature, or else, as is the view of Spinoza, you are forced to be what you are by the causes that have produced you, and that have brought you here." The fact that most people grasp general statements Xxii INTRODUCTION. either slightly or not at all is well understood by good speakers and writers. Their works, accordingly, abound in such concrete instances as appear in the five following passages, chosen from many in this volume : " What, truly, can seem more obviously different from one another, in faculty, in form, and in substance, than the various kinds of living beings ? What community of faculty can there be between the brightly -colored lichen, which so nearly resembles a mere mineral incrustation of the bare rock on which it grows, and the painter, to whom it is instinct with beauty, or the bot- anist, whom it feeds with knowledge ? " Huxley, page 23, lines 12-19. " He held his own fairly with the wits of his Court, and bandied repartees on equal terms with Sedley or Buckingham. Even Rochester in his merciless epigram was forced to own that ' Charles never said a foolish thing.' He had inherited in fact his grandfather's gift of pithy sayings, and his habitual irony often gave an amusing turn to them. When his brother, the most unpopular man in England, solemnly warned him of plots against his life, Charles laughingly bade him set all fear aside. ' They will never kill me, James,' he said, ' to make you king.' " Green, page 42, lines 30-32, page 43, lines 1-9. " Who are you, that you should fret and rage, and bite the chains of Nature ? nothing worse happens to you than does to all nations who have extensive empire; and it happens in all the forms into which empire can be thrown. In large bodies, the circulation of power must be less vigorous at the extremities. Nature has said it. The Turk cannot govern Egypt, and Arabia, and Kurdistan, as he governs Thrace ; nor has he the same dominion in Crimea and Algiers which he has at Brusa and Smyrna." Burke, page 102, lines 6-15. " Even the elements of science and religion show traces of a community of origin. The numbers aro the same up to one INTRODUCTION. xxiii hundred (Sanscrit fatam eka$atam, Latin centum, Greek -/cardy, Gothic hund} ; and the moon receives her name in all languages from the fact that men measure time by her (mensis)" Mommsen, page 77, lines 11-16. " The question, how to live, is itself a moral idea; and it is the question which most interests every man, and with which, in some way or other, he is perpetually occupied. A large sense is of course to be given to the term moral. Whatever bears upon the question, ' how to live,' comes under it. ' Nor love thy life, nor hate; but, what thou liv'st, Live well ; how long or short, permit to heaven.' In those fine lines Milton utters, as every one at once per- ceives, a moral idea. Yes, but so too, when Keats consoles the forward-bending lover on the Grecian Urn, the lover arrested and presented in immortal relief by the sculptor's hand before he can kiss, with the line, ' Forever wilt thou love, and she be fair, ' he utters a moral idea. When Shakespeare says, that ' We are such stuff As dreams are made of, and our little life Is rounded with a sleep,' he utters a moral idea." Arnold, page 167, lines 8-20. Although supplying apt examples is often a hard job, the toil is well spent. Without them a writer surely invites the censure passed long ago by Sir Philip Sidney, "his knowledge standeth so much upon the abstract and general, that happy is that man who may understand him." With them, on the other hand, the writer may perhaps win the praise Sidney accorded the " peerless poet/' " he coupleth the general notion with the particular example." xxiv INTRODUCTION. VI. SUMMARY. IN brief, then, the term exposition in this volume has been taken broadly to include all writing, the main purpose of which is to explain. Exposition differs from argumentation in that it merely explains, rather than convinces or persuades ; from description and narration, in that it deals with a class rather than with an individual. For an adequate exposition the first requisite is clearness ; the second, force. To secure these qualities the most important principles to be ob- served are unity, logical division and arrangement of material, and the illustration of general statements by specific examples. SPECIMENS OF EXPOSITION. Development of a plan* Below are four plans of Matthew Arnold's essay on Wordsworth, the last in this volume. These plans, which differ only in elaboration, show how a simple outline may be gradually filled in till it becomes a fairly 5 complete synopsis of the original essay. As a syn- opsis, however, it is unsatisfactory, because it lacks literary form. The main points, which are given large Roman numerals, appear in the first plan. The sub- ordinate ideas, which are marked by letters large and to small and by Arabic numerals, are added one after another in the succeeding plans. Of course, plans of some of the shorter selections are necessarily less elaborate. I. WORDSWORTH. BY MATTHEW ARNOLD. I. Wordsworth is unpopular. 15 II. Notwithstanding his unpopularity, he is one of the greatest poets. I 2 THE DEVELOPMENT OF A PLAN. III. This greacaess most readers fail to perceive. IV. Well arranged selections irom his works would, howevet, show his superiority. V. His superior power is found in his noble and pro- found application of ideas to life and in his 5 unique and unmatchable style. VI. Summary. II. WORDSWORTH, BY MATTHEW ARNOLD. I. Wordsworth is unpopular. A. At home he is not read ; B. On the Continent he is unknown. 10 II. Notwithstanding his unpopularity, he is, A. After Shakespeare and Milton, the greatest English poet ; B. Except Goethe, the greatest European poet since Moliere. 15 III. This greatness most readers fail to perceive, be- cause : A. His poems of greatest bulk are by no means his best ; B. His good pieces are mingled with a mass of 20 inferior ones, which destroy the effect ; C. He has classified his poems in an unsatisfac- tory fashion. IV. Well arranged selections would show him, A. Not by comparison of single pieces, superior 25 to the best of the later English or Conti- nental poets ; WORDSWORTH. $ B. But superior to them in ampler body of power- ful work. V. His superior power is found in A. His noble and profound application of ideas to 5 life; R His unique and unmatchable style. VI. Summary. III. WORDSWORTH. BY MATTHEW ARNOLD. I. Wordsworth is unpopular. A. At home, 10 a. In his lifetime he was but little read ; b. Since his death his fame has scarcely grown ; B. The Continent, which has a. Recognized the glory of Newton and Darwin, b. Does not know Wordsworth ; 15 c. Yet the Continental critics long failed to do justice to Shakespeare and Milton. II. Notwithstanding Wordsworth's unpopularity, he is, A. After Shakespeare and Milton, the greatest English poet. For, in power, in interest, in 20 the qualities which give enduring freshness, he is superior to all the others ; B. Except Goethe, the greatest European poet since Moliere. For, in real poetic achieve- ment, he ranks above the leading poets of 25 a. Germany, b. Italy, c. France. 4 THE DEVELOPMENT OF A PLAN. III. This greatness most readers fail to perceive, be- cause : A. His poems of greatest bulk are by no means his best ; B. His good pieces are mingled with a mass of 5 inferior ones, which destroy the effect ; C. He has classified his poems in an unsatisfac- tory fashion. IV. Well arranged selections would show him, A. Not by comparison of single pieces, superior 10 to the best of the later a. English poets, b. Or Continental poets ; B. But superior to them in ampler body of power- ful work. 15 V. His superior power is found in A. His noble and profound application of ideas to life. For, a. Poetry is at bottom a criticism of life from the point of view of morals ; 20 b. A poetry of revolt against moral ideas is a poetry of revolt against life ; c. Though other poets revolt against moral ideas, or are content with subordinate things, Wordsworth criticises life accord- 25 ing to moral ideas. B. His style, which is a. Often ponderous and pompous, b. Yet often has the subtle turn and heighten- ing of the best poets ; 30 c. It has also a noble plainness, like that of Burns. WORDSWORTH. 5 d. In spite of these suggestions of the style of other poets, Wordsworth's style is, never- theless, unique and unmatchable. VI. Summary. IV. WORDSWORTH. BY MATTHEW ARNOLD. $ I. Wordsworth is unpopular. A. At home, a. In his lifetime, 1. His poetry sold poorly ; 2. The public was slow to recognize him ; 10 3. He was effaced by Scott and Byron; 4. He was overshadowed by Tennyson. b. Since his death, i. Coleridge's influence, which once told strongly in his favor, has waned ; 15 2. In spite of Wordsworth's able eulogists, the public has remained cold. B. The Continent, which has a. Recognized the glory of Newton and Darwin b. Does not know Wordsworth ; 20 c. Yet Continental critics long failed to do justice to Shakespeare and Milton. II. Notwithstanding Wordsworth's unpopularity, he is, A. After Shakespeare and Milton, the greatest English poet. For in power, in interest, in *5 the qualities which give enduring freshness, he is superior to Spenser, Dryden, Pope, Gray, Goldsmith, Cowper, Burns, Coleridge, 6 THE DEVELOPMENT OF A PLAN. Scott, Campbell, Moore, Byron, Shelley, and Keats. B. Except Goethe, the greatest European poet since Moliere. For, in real poetic achieve- ment, he ranks above the leading poets of ^ a. Germany Klopstock, Lessing, Schiller, Uhland, Riickert, and Heine ; b. Italy Filicaia, Alfieri, Manzoni, and Leo- pardi ; c. France Racine, Boileau, Voltaire, Andre 10 Chenier, Beranger, Lamartine, Musset, and M. Victor Hugo. III. This greatness most readers fail to perceive, be- cause : A. His poems of greatest bulk are by no means 15 his best the " Excursion " and the " Pre- lude " ; B. His good pieces are mingled with a mass of inferior ones, which destroy the effect ; C. He classified his poems in an unsatisfactory 20 fashion poems of fancy, poems of imagina- tion, poems of sentiment, poems of reflec- tion, etc. IV. Well arranged selections would show him, A. Not by comparison of single pieces, superior 25 to the best of the later a. English poets Gray, Burns, Coleridge, and Keats ; b. Or the Continental poets Manzoni and Heine ; 30 B. But superior to all these in ampler body of powerful work. WORDSWORTH. j V. Wordsworth's superior power is found in, A. His noble and profound application of ideas to life. For a. Poetry is at bottom a criticism of life from 5 the point of view of morals, even though morals, the essential thing in life, 1. Are often treated in a narrow and false fashion ; 2. Are bound up with systems of thought 10 and belief which have had their day ; 3. Have fallen into the hands of profes- sional dealers and pedants ; 4. Have grown tiresome to some of us ; 5. And at times inspire revolt. 15 b. A poetry of revolt against moral ideas is a poetry of revolt against life. For 1. The concern how to live a moral idea is the chief and master thing ; 2. The play of the senses, literary form or 20 finish, or argumentative ingenuity, are subordinate things. c. Though other poets revolt against moral ideas, or are content with these subordi- nate things, Wordsworth criticises life ac- 25 cording to moral ideas ; he deals with life, 1. Directly. In this respect he is above those who have not this distinctive accent of high and genuine poets, such 30 as Voltaire, Dryden, Pope, Lessing, and Schiller. 2. As a whole. 8 THE DEVELOPMENT OF A PLAN. 3. And more powerfully than others who actually have the distinctive accent, . such as Burns, Keats, and Heine. Such dealing consists, i. Not in uttering philosophic truths, as 5 in the " Excursion," ii. Nor in setting forth a scientific system of thought, iii. But in feeling, a. The joy offered to us in Nature ; 10 /3. The simple, primary affections and duties which are universally ac- cessible. B. His style, which is, a. Often ponderous and pompous, as in the 15 " Excursion,'* b. Yet often has the subtle turn and heighten- ing we find in Shakespeare and Milton. c. It has also a noble plainness, like that of Burns. 20 d. In spite of these suggestions of the style of other poets, Wordsworth's style is unique and unmatchable in two respects : 1. The profound sincerity with which he feels his subject, as in " Resolution and 2 5 Independence" ; 2. The profoundly sincere and natural character of the subject itself, as in " Michael," " The Fountain," and " The Highland Reaper." 3 VI. Summary. GEORGE C. V. HOLMES. The following selection is based upon the first chapter of George C. V. Holmes's " The Steam-Engine, " in the " Text- Books of Science." London, 1888. The chapter has been shortened by the omission of passages referring to subsequent 5 parts of the book and by minor changes in phrasing. This explanation of the engine is an example of exposition which for perfect clearness needs illustration by diagram. Such illustration is a valuable supplement to most writing which deals with mechanism or with natural objects at all complex in struct- 10 ure, like animal or vegetable forms. Another point worth noting is the careful definition of technical terms, which makes the piece generally intelligible, even though it is intended for those who already know something of the subject. Of course writing tech- nical treatises which can be understood only by those possessing j 5 technical knowledge is perfectly legitimate, but the average stu- dent will find better practice, so far as English Composition is con- cerned, in the harder task of imparting his technical knowledge to laymen. The student who does well in this more difficult undertaking will be fairly sure of success in the easier. 20 A COMPLETE knowledge of the steam-engine involves an acquaintance with the sciences of physics, of chemis- try, and of pure and applied mathematics, as well as with the theory of mechanism and the strength of materials. My plan, however, is to begin by showing in a very 9 10 THE STEAM-ENGINE. simple case how steam can do work, and then to ex- plain an actual engine of the most modern construction, but at the same time remarkably free from complexity. Take a hollow cylinder, figure i, the bottom closed while the top remains open, and pour in water to the 5 height of a few inches. Next cover the water with a flat plate, or piston, which fits the interior of the cyl- inder perfectly ; then apply heat to the water, and we shall witness the following phenomena. After the lapse of some minutes the water 10 will begin to boil, and the steam accumulating at the upper surface will make room for itself by raising the piston slightly. As the boiling continues, more and more steam 15 will be formed, and raise the piston higher and higher, till all the water is boiled away, and nothing but steam is left in the cylinder. Now this machine, consisting of cylinder, 20 piston, water, and fire, is the steam- engine in its most elementary form. For a steam-engine may be defined as an apparatus for doing work by means of heat applied to water ; and since raising such 25 a weight as the piston is a form of doing work, this apparatus, clumsy and inconvenient though it may be, answers the definition precisely. Furthermore, if instead of a simple piston we had taken one loaded with weights, and had applied heat as 30 before, the result would have been similar, but not ex- actly the same. The water would not have begun to boil GEORGE C. f. &OLMES. 1 1 so soon, and when it was all boiled away, the loaded piston would not have risen to the same height as the unloaded. Suppose next that, having raised the weight as far as it would go, and having then removed it from 5 the piston, we wished to employ the apparatus to raise another weight, we should then have to bring back the steam to its condition of water. This we could do by removing the fire and surrounding the cylinder with cold water instead. As a result the steam, condensing 10 into water, would fall back to its original volume, the piston would follow it, and everything would be ready for a fresh start. We see then that this apparatus, though a steam-engine, is nevertheless a very bad one, for the following reasons : first, the only kind of work 1 5 it can do is raising weights through certain heights; secondly, when we want to repeat the operation, we have to go through the cumbrous process of removing the fire, surrounding the cylinder with water, and then replacing the fire ; thirdly, while condensing the steam 20 by this method, we make the cylinder cold, and waste a large quantity of heat in warming it again ; and finally, when at the cost of considerable fuel we have heated the water and turned it into steam, we allow all the heat of the steam to escape into the cold water, and 25 thus become wasted, though, if properly used, it is capable of doing much more work. We conclude, there- fore, that our elementary engine is limited in scope, clumsy in use, and extremely wasteful of fuel. It is in obviating these disadvantages that actual engines differ 30 from it. This engine, as has been said, consists of four ele- ments, namely : the fire, or source of heat ; the water, 12 THE STEAM-ENGINE. or medium to which the heat is applied, and which, when turned into steam, does work; the piston and cylinder to contain the water and steam, and to prevent the latter from escaping into the air and becoming lost ; and, lastly, the source of cold, or water by which the 5 steam is condensed and brought back to its original condition. Most real engines consist of these four elements, advantageously adjusted, and with the addi- tion of mechanism for changing the straight line move- ment of the piston into circular, or some other kind of 10 motion. In practice the arrangement adopted is as follows : 1. The source of heat and the vessel containing the water to be boiled, called respectively the furnace and the boiler, are kept separate from the cylinder. A pipe, 15 called a steam-pipe, carries the steam from the boiler, where it is generated, to the cylinder, where it is used. 2. The steam, after doing its work in the cylinder, is not condensed by the pouring of cold water over the cylinder, but the same general purpose of getting the 20 piston ready to repeat its movement is effected by tak- ing the old steam out of the cylinder, and letting in a new supply. The steam, thus taken out through a second pipe, called an exhaust-pipe, is led, either into the open air, where it escapes, or into the condenser, 25 a separate vessel wholly apart from the cylinder. 3. The cylinder, instead of being open at one end, and of indefinite length, is closed at both ends, and in length seldom exceeds twice the diameter of the piston. 4. The steam, instead of being used on but one side 30 of the piston, is admitted first to one side and then to the other, and is also exhausted from the sides alter- GEORGE C. V. HOLMES. 13 nately, so that when the engine is in use, the piston is constantly travelling backward and forward from one end of the cylinder to the other. To allow the steam thus alternately to enter and escape, suitable openings Bare made at each end of the cylinder, and valves are provided to insure the admission and escape of the steam at the proper moments. 5. The piston, instead of being loaded with weights to be lifted directly, is fitted with a cylindrical bar, or 10 rod, called the piston-rod, firmly attached to the centre of the piston, and continued through the cylinder into the open air, where it moves backward and forward in a straight line, exactly as the piston does. By a me- chanical contrivance, to be described hereafter, this 15 straight line motion of the end of the piston-rod is changed into circular motion, so that the engine can be used, not only for lifting weights, but for turning wheels and doing any other work required. The manner in which some of these purposes are 20 accomplished is shown by the accompanying diagram. Figure 2 is an elevation of the boiler ; figure 3 a verti- cal section through its axis ; and figure 4 a horizontal section through the furnace bars. The type of steam-generator here exhibited is known 25 as a vertical tubular boiler. The outside casing, or shell, which is cylindrical in shape, is composed of wrought iron, or steel plates, riveted together as shown in figure 2. The top, which is also composed of the same material, is slightly dome-shaped, except at the 30 centre, which is cut away to receive the chimney, a, a cylinder of thin wrought iron p'ates. The interior, which is shown in vertical section in figure 3, contains THE STEAM-ENGINE. Fig. 2. in the first place the furnace-chamber, b, which holds the fire. This furnace, like the shell of the boiler, is formed of wrought iron, or steel plates, in the shape of a cylinder, the top of which is covered by a flat cir- cular plate, cc, firmly attached to 5 the cylinder by flanging and rivet- ing. The bottom is occupied by the grating on which rests the in- candescent fuel. This grating con- sists of a number of cast iron bars, IG d in figure 3, and shown in plan in figure 4, placed so as to have in- terstices between them, like the grate of an ordinary Fig. 4. GEORGE C. F. HOLMZs. 15 fireplace. The top covering plate, cc, is perforated with a number of circular holes of from one and a half to three inches. in diameter, according to the size of the boiler. Into each of these holes is fixed a 5 vertical tube of brass, wrought iron, or steel, shown at ffff, figure 3. These tubes at their top ends pass through similar holes in the plate, gg, which is firmly riveted to the outside shell of the boiler. The tubes thus connecting the plates, cc and gg, serve to 10 convey the flame, smoke, and hot air from the fire to the smoke-box, //, and thence into the chimney, a ; and at the same iime the sides of these tubes provide ample surface to allow the heat from combustion to escape into the water and set it boiling. The fresh fuel is 15 thrown on the grating through the fire-door, A, figure 2. The ashes fall between the fire-bars into the ash-pit, B, figure 3. The water, which is contained in the space between the shell of the boiler, the furnace-chamber, and the 20 tubes, is kept at about the level, ww, figure 3, the space above being reserved for the rising steam. The steam ascending into this space is thence led away by the steam-pipe to the engine. Unless consumed quickl} 1 enough by the engine, the steam would accumulate in 25 the boiler and exert a pressure which would finally burst the boiler. To provide against this danger the steam, when it rises above a certain pressure, is allowed to escape into the open air through the safety-valve shown in sketch on the top of the boiler in figure 2. 30 We come now to the engine. The type selected for illustration is that usually called horizontal single cylinder, direct acting. Figure 5 is an elevation of the 777^ STEAM-ENGINE. GEORGE C. K HOLMES. 17 exterior ; figure 6 is a horizontal section of the cylinder, piston, and valve-box ; figure 7 is a plan, or a view of the engine as you look directly down upon it. The cylinder is shown at A, figures 5, 6, and 7 ; but the construction is best seen from the section, figure 6. The cylinder is of cast iron, with the ends flanged, so that the cylinder covers, or end plates, aa, and the Fig. 6. frame, PP, may be bolted to it. The piston, shown at B, is a circular cast iron disc, fitting the cylinder so 10 tightly that no steam can pass it. Into the piston is fixed the piston-rod, C, which passes through the front cylinder cover : the opening where it passes is made steam-tight by the stuffing-box, D. The further end of the piston-rod is fastened to the cross-head, E, figure 5 , 15 this cross-head is a joint for connecting the piston- rod to the connecting-rod, F, so that the latter can swing up and down, as the piston and piston-rod travel backward and forward. The cross-head is also pro- vided with two slides, ee, figure 5, which move between 20 the guide-bars,^ figures 5 and 6, and which keep the piston-rod from being bent, and from moving otherwise than in a straight line. The connecting-rod, F, joins 2 iS THE STEAM-ENGINE. GEORGE C. V. HOLMES. 19 the end of the piston-rod to the crank-pin, G. This pin turns about an axle, the crank-axle, which is shown in section at H, figure 5, but is seen more clearly in the plan, figure 7, where the axle passes through the 5 two bearings, LL. When the steam is allowed to flow from the boiler into the cylinder, so as to obtain admission into the space to the left of the piston in figure 6, the piston oegins to move, carrying with it the piston-rod, the 10 cross-head, and the connecting-rod. Since, however, the further end of the connecting-rod is fastened to the crank-pin, G, figure 5, this further end can move only in the circle which the pin must describe about its axle. Consequently, when the motion of the piston 1 5 drives the connecting-rod away from the cylinder, the crank-pin will be pushed through a part of the circle indicated by the dotted line say from G to G' in figure 5 ; then the momentum of the wheel to which the crank-pin is attached will carry the pin a little 20 further down along the same dotted line. If at this moment the steam is cut off from the side of the pis- ton on which it has been pressing, and at the same instant is allowed to rush into the other end of the cylinder, then the piston will be driven in the contrary 25 direction, and the crank-pin, together with the wheel to which it is fastened, will be pulled through the com- plete circle. This operation of impelling the piston backward and forward may be repeated as often as we like, and the piston, working through the connecting- 3 rod and crank-pin, may thus turn a wheel continuously and drive machinery, provided only that we have a suitable contrivance for admitting the steam to the 20 THE STEAM-ENGINE. sides of the piston alternately, and alternately letting it escape into the open air or into a condenser. The admission of the steam is regulated as follows : In figure 6 is shown a box-like casing, MM, cast in one pjece with the cylinder, and on one side of it. This 5 box contains the valve, V, which controls the flow of the steam. For the sake of clearness, the following diagram, figure 8, is given to exhibit the valve and the side of the cylinder drawn to a larger scale. The side of the cylinder next the valve-box has two passages, 10 Fig. 8. ,$/, called the steam-ports, because through them the steam gains access to the cylinder and escapes from it. When the engine is at work, the cast iron box contain- ing the valve is always filled with steam from the boiler. When the valve occupies the position shown in figure 15 8, the steam cannot enter the cylinder at all, because both ports are covered by the valve. If the valve, however, be moved a little to the right, so as to uncover the steam-port, s, two things will happen : first, the steam will pass through the port,^,into the cylinder, and 20 will push the piston from left to right ; and secondly, GEORGE C. V. HOLMES. 21 the port, /, will be uncovered by the inner edge of the valve, so that the steam in the right end of the cylinder will escape through the port, /, into the interior hollow of the valve, and thence into the exhaust-passage, ^, 5 which leads either into the open air or into a condenser. This arrangement of the valve is shown in figure 9. If, when the piston has reached the end of its forward stroke, the valve be moved back to the corresponding Fig. 9- position on the other side, the steam from the boiler 10 can enter the cylinder through / and force the piston back from right to left, while the steam on the left of the piston will escape through s into the exhaust-pas- sage. The sliding-valve is thrown backward and for- ward by the action of an eccentric moving on the same 15 axle as the crank-pin. This piece of mechanism, how ever, will be explained in another chapter. II. tTbe iPbESfcal ;!Baste of Xffc. THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY, 1825. The substance of this paper was contained in a discourse de- livered in Edinburgh Sunday evening, November 8, 1868, the first of a series of Sunday evening addresses upon secular topics, in- stituted by the Rev. J. Cranbrook. The paper was printed in 1871 under the title, " On the Physical Basis of Life," in Huxley's " Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews," and again in 1894 in the first volume of Huxley's collected writings, entitled " Methods and Results." This piece of scientific exposition has three notable excellences. For one thing, the words are so simple, that, though not perhaps intelligible to a child, they may be easily understood by a man of fair education. Secondly, the divisions of the subject are distinct : in order to show that " a unity of power or faculty, a unity of form, and a unity of substantial composition " pervade " the whole liv- ing world," Huxley discusses each of these three unities separately. Lastly, he makes general statements vivid by the use of specific examples. IN order to make the title of this discourse generally intelligible, I have translated the term " Protoplasm/' which is the scientific name of the substance of which I am about to speak, by the words " the physical basis of life." I suppose that, to many, the idea that there 5 is such a thing as a physical basis, or matter, of life 22 : THOMAS ffENR Y HUXLE Y. 23 may be novel so widely spread is the conception of life as a something which works through matter, but is independent of it ; and even those who are aware that matter and life are inseparably connected, may not be 5 prepared for the conclusion plainly suggested by the phrase, "///^physical basis or matter of life," that there is some one kind of matter which is common to all liv- ing beings, and that their endless diversities are bound together by a physical, as well as an ideal, unity. In f "of act, when first apprehended, such a doctrine as this appears almost shocking to common sense. What, truly, can seem to be more obviously different from one another, in faculty, in form, and in substance, er-j than the various kinds of living beings ? What com- I 5munityof faculty can there be between the brightly- colored lichen, which so nearly resembles a mere mineral incrustation of the bare rock on which it grows, and the painter, to whom it is instinct with beauty, or the botanist, whom it feeds with knowledge ? \2o Again, mink of the microscopic fungus a mere in- finitesimal ovoid particle, which finds space and dura- tion enough to multiply into countless millions in the body of a living fly ; and then of the wealth of foliage, the luxuriance of flower and fruit, which lies between 25 this bald sketch of a plant and the giant pme of Cal- ifornia, towering to the dimensions of a cathedral spire, or the Indian g, which covers acres with its profound shadow, and endures while nations and empires come and go around its vast circumference. Or, turning to 30 the other half of the world of life, picture to yourselves the great Finner whale, hugest of beasts that live, or have lived, disporting his eighty or ninety feet of bone, 24 THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF LIFE. muscle, and blubber, with easy roll, among waves in which the stoutest ship that ever left dockyard would flounder hopelessly ; and contrast him with the invisible animalcules mere gelatinous specks, multitudes of which could, in fact, dance upon the point of a needle 5 with the same ease as the angels of the Schoolmen could, in imagination. With these images before your minds, you may well ask, what community of form, or structure, is there between the animalcule and the whale ; or between the fungus and the fig-tree ? And, 10 a fortiori, between all four ? Finally, if we regard substance, or material composi- tion, what hidden bond can connect the flower which a girl wears in her hair and the bloo,d which courses through her youthful veins; or, what is therein com- 15 mon between the dense and resisting mass of the oal^, or the strong fabric of the tortoise, and those broad disks of glassy jelly which may be seen pulsating through the waters of a calm sea, but which drain away to mere films in the hand which raises them out of 20 f their element ? Such objections as these must, I think, arise in the mind of every one who ponders, for the first time, upon the conception of a single physical basis of life under- lying all the diversities of vital existence ; but I pro- 25 pose to demonstrate to you that, notwithstanding these apparent difficulties, a threefold unity namely, a unity of power or faculty, a unity of form, and a unity of sub- stantial composition does pervade the whole living world. 30 No very abstruse argumentation is needed, in the first place to prove that the powers, or faculties, of all kinds THOMAS HENR Y HUXLE Y. 25 of living matter, diverse as they may be in degree, are substantially similar in kind. Goethe has condensed a survey of all powers of man- kind into the well-known epigram : " Warum treibt sich das Volk so und schreit ? Es will sich ernahren Kinder zeugen, und die nahren so gut es vermag. * * * # Weiter bringt es kein Mensch, stell' er sich wie er auch will." 5 In physiological language this means, that all the multifarious and complicated activities of man are com- prehensible under three categories. Either they are immediately directed towards the maintenance and de- velopment of the body, or they effect transitory changes 10 in the relative positions of parts of the body, or they tend towards the continuance of the species. Even those manifestations of intellect, of feeling, and of will, which we rightly name the higher faculties, are not ex- cluded from this classification, inasmuch as to every r 5one but the subject of them, they are known only as transitory changes in the relative positions of parts of the body. Speech, gesture, and every other form of human action are, in the long run, resolvable into mus- cular contraction, and muscular contraction is but a 20 transitory change in the relative positions of the parts of a muscle. But the scheme which is large enough to embrace the activities of the highest form of life, covers all those of the lower creatures. The lowest plant, or animalcule, feeds, grows, and reproduces its kind. In 25 addition, all animals manifest those transitory changes of form which we class under irritability and contrac- 26 THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF LIFE. tility; and, it is more than probable, that when the vegetable world is thoroughly explored, we shall find all plants in possession of the same powers, at one time or other of their existence. I am not now alluding to such phenomena, at once 5 rare and conspicuous, as those exhibited by the leaflets of the sensitive plants, or the stamens of the barberry, but to much more widely spread, and at the same time, more subtle and hidden, manifestations of vegetable contractility. You are doubtless aware that the com- ic mon nettle owes its stinging property to the innumera- ble stiff and needle-like, though exquisitely delicate, hairs which cover its surface. Each stinging-needle tapers from a broad base to a slender summit, which, though rounded at the end, is of such microscopic fine- 15 ness that it readily penetrates, and breaks off in, the skin. The whole hair consists of a very delicate outer case of wood, closely applied to the inner surface of which is a layer of semifluid matter, full of innumerable granules of extreme minuteness. This semi-fluid lin-2o ing is protoplasm, which thus constitutes a kind of bag, full of limpid liquid, and roughly corresponding in form with the interior of the hair which it fills. When viewed with a sufficiently high magnifying power, the proto- plasmic layer of the nettle hair is seen to be in a con- 25 dition of unceasing activity. Local contractions of the whole thickness of its substance pass slowly and grad- ually from point to point, and give rise to the appear- ance of progressive waves, just as the bending of suc- cessive stalks of corn by a breeze produces rne apparent 3 billows of a cornfield. But, in addition to these movements, and independ* THOMAS HENR Y HUXLE K 27 ently of them, the granules are driven, in relatively rapid streams, through channels in the protoplasm which seem to have a considerable amount of persistence. Most commonly, the currents in adjacent parts of the 5 protoplasm take similar directions ; and, thus, there is a general stream up one side of the hair and down the other. But this does not prevent the existence of partial currents which take different routes ; and some- times trains of granules may be seen coursing swiftly 10 in opposite directions within a twenty-thousandth of an inch of one another ; while, occasionally, opposite streams come into direct collision, and, after a longer or shorter struggle, one predominates. The cause of these currents seems to lie in contractions of the proto- 15 plasm which bounds the channels in which they flow, but which are so minute that the best microscopes show only their effects, and not themselves. The spectacle afforded by the wonderful energies prisoned within the compass of the microscopic hair of 20 a plant, which we commonly regard as a merely passive organism, is not easily forgotten by one who has watched its display, continued hour after hour, without pause or sign of weakening. The possible complexity of many other organic forms, seemingly as simple as 25 the protoplasm of the nettle, dawns upon one ; and the comparison of such a protoplasm to a body with an in- ternal circulation, which has been put forward by an eminent physiologist, loses much of its startling char- acter. Currents similar to those of the hairs of the 30 nettle have been observed in a great multitude of very different plants, and weighty authorities have suggested that they probably occur, in more or less perfection, in 28 THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF LIFE. all young vegetable cells. If such be the case, the wonderful noonday silence of a tropical forest is, after all, due only to the dullness of our hearing ; and could our ears catch the murmur of these tiny Maelstroms, as they whirl in the innumerable myriads of living cells 5 which constitute each tree, we should be stunned, as with the roar of a great city. Among the lower plants, it is the rule rather than the exception, that contractility should be still more openly manifested at some periods of their existence. a The protoplasm of Algce and Fungi becomes, under many circumstances, partially, or completely, freed from its woody case, and exhibits movements of its whole mass, or is propelled by the contractility of one, or more, hair-like prolongations of its body, which are 15 called vibratile cilia. And, so far as the conditions of the manifestation of the phenomena of contractility have yet been studied, they are the same for the plant as for the animal. Heat and electric shocks influence both, and in the same way, though it may be in different 20 degrees. It is by no means my intention to suggest that there is no difference in faculty between the lowest plant and the highest, or between plants and animals. But the difference between the powers of the lowest plant, or animal, and those of the highest, is one of 2* degree, not of kind, and depends, as Milne-Edwards long ago so well pointed out, upon the extent to which the principle of the division of labor is carried out in the living economy. In the lowest organism all parts are competent to perform all functions, and one and 30 the same portion of protoplasm may successfully take on the function of feeding, moving, or reproducing ap- THOMAS HEtfR Y HUXLE Y. 29 paratus. In the highest, on the contrary, a great num- ber of parts combine to perform each function, each part doing its allotted share of the work with great accuracy and efficiency, but being useless for any other t 5 purpose. On the other hand, notwithstanding all the funda- mental resemblances which exist between the powers of the protoplasm in plants and in animals, they present a striking difference (to which I shall advert more at 10 length presently), in the fact that plants can manu- facture fresh protoplasm out of mineral compounds, whereas animals are obliged to procure it ready made, and hence, in the long run, depend upon plants. Upon what condition this difference in the powers of the two 1 5 great divisions of the world of life depends, nothing is at present known. With such qualifications as arise out of the last- > j mentioned fact, it may be truly said that the acts of all living things are fundamentally one. 2 * Is 20 any such unity predicable of their forms ? Let us seek in easily verified facts for a reply to this ques- tion. If a drop of blood be drawn by pricking one's finger, and viewed with proper precautions, and under a sufficiently high microscopic power, there will be /$ 25 seen, among the innumerable multitude of little, cir- '' cular, discoidal bodies, or corpuscles, which float in it and give it its color, a comparatively small number of colorless corpuscles, of somewhat larger size and very irregular shape. If the drop of blood be kept at the 30 temperature of the body, these colorless corpuscles * Before proceeding to discuss " unity of form," Huxley thus briefly sums up what he has said of " unity of power or faculty." 30 THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF LIFE. will be seen to exhibit a marvellous activity, changing their forms with great rapidity, drawing in and thrust- ing out prolongations of their substance, and creeping about as if they were independent organisms. The substance which is thus active is a mass of q protoplasm*, and its activity differs in detail, rather than in principle, from that of the protoplasm of the nettle. Under sundry circumstances the corpuscle dies and becomes distended into a round mass, in the midst of which is seen a smaller spherical body, which ic existed, but was more or less hidden, in the living corpuscle, and is called its nucleus. Corpuscles of essentially similar structure are to be found in the skin, in the lining of the mouth, and scattered through the whole framework of the body. Nay, more; in the 15 earliest condition of the human organism, in that state in which it has but just become distinguishable from the egg in which it arises, it is nothing but an aggrega- tion of such corpuscles, and every organ of the body was, once, no more than such an aggregation. 20 Thus a nucleated mass of protoplasm turns out to be what may be termed the structural unit of the human body. As a matter of fact, the body, in its earliest state, is a mere multiple of such units ; and in its perfect condition, it is a multiple of such units, 25 variously modified. But does the formula which expresses the essential structural character of the highest animal cover all the rest, as the statement of its powers and faculties covered that of all others ? Very nearly. Beast and 30 fowl, reptile and fish, mollusk, worm, and polype, are all composed of structural units of the same character, THOMAS HENR Y HUXL &. 31 namely, masses of protoplasm with a nucleus. There are sundry very low animals, each of which, structur- ally, is a mere colorless blood-corpuscle, leading an independent life. But, at the very bottom of the animal 5 scale, even this simplicity becomes simplified, and all the phenomena of life are manifested by a particle of protoplasm without a nucleus. Nor are such organisms insignificant by reason of their want of complexity. It is a fair question whether the protoplasm of those 10 simplest forms of life, which people an immense extent of the bottom of the sea, would not outweigh that of all the higher living beings which inhabit the land put together. And in ancient times, no less than at the present day, such living beings as these have been the 15 greatest of rock builders. What has been said of the animal world is no less true of plants. Imbedded in the protoplasm at the broad, or attached, end of the nettle hair, there lies a spheroidal nucleus. Careful examination further 20 proves that the whole substance of the nettle is made up of a repetition of such masses of nucleated proto- plasm, each contained in a wooden case, which is modi- fied in form, sometimes into^t woody fibre, sometimes into a duct or spiral vessel, sometimes into a pollen 25 grain, or an ovule. Traced back to its earliest state, the nettle arises as the man does, in a particle of nucleated protoplasm. And in the lowest plants, as in the lowest animals, a single mass of such protoplasm may constitute the whole plant, or the protoplasm may 30 exist without a nucleus. Under these circumstances it may well be asked, how is one mass of non-nucleated protoplasm to be 32 THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF distinguished from another ? why call one " plant " and the other " animal " ? The only reply is that, so far as form is concerned, plants and animals are not separable, and that, in many cases, it is a mere matter of convention whether we 5 call a given organism an animal or a plant. There is a living body called ^Ethalium septicum, which appears upon decaying vegetable substances, and, in one of its forms, is common upon the surfaces of tan-pits. In this condition it is, to all intents and purposes, a fungus, 10 and formerly was always regarded as such ; but the remarkable investigations of De Bary have shown that, in another condition, the sEthalium is an actively locomotive creature, and takes in solid matters, upon which, apparently, it feeds, thus exhibiting the most 15 characteristic feature of animality. Is this a plant ; or is it an animal? Is it both; or is it neither? Some decide in favor of the last supposition, and establish an intermediate kingdom, a sort of biological No Man's Land for all these questionable forms. But, as it is 20 admittedly impossible to draw any distinct boundary line between this no man's land and the vegetable world on the one hand, or the animal, on the other, it appears to me that this proceeding merely doubles the difficulty which, before, was single. 25 Protoplasm, simple or nucleated, is the formal basis of all life. It is the clay of the potter : which, bake it and paint it as he will, remains clay, separated by arti- fice, and not by nature, from the commonest brick or sun-dried clod. 30 Thus it becomes clear that all living powers are cog- nate, and that all living forms are fundamentally of THOMAS HENR Y HUXLE Y. 33 one character.* The researches of the chemist have revealed a no less striking uniformity of material com- position in living matter. In perfect strictness, it is true that chemical investi- 5 gation can tell us little or nothing, directly, of the com- position of living matter, inasmuch as such mattei must needs die in the act of analysis, and upon this very obvious ground, objections, which I confess seen) to me to be somewhat frivolous, have been raised to 10 the drawing of any conclusions whatever respecting the composition of actually living matter, from that of the dead matter of life, which alone is accessible to us. But objectors of this class do not seem to reflect that it is also, in strictness, true that we know nothing 1 5 about the composition of any body whatever, as it is. The statement that a crystal of calc-spar consists of carbonate of lime, is quite true, if we only mean that, by appropriate processes, it may be resolved into carbonic acid and quicklime. If you pass the same 20 carbonic acid over the very quicklime thus obtained, you will obtain carbonate of lime again ; but it will not be calc-spar, nor anything like it. Can it, therefore, be said that chemical analysis teaches nothing about the chemical composition of calc-spar ? Such a state- 25 ment would be absurd ; but it is hardly more so than the talk one occasionally hears about the uselessness of applying the results of chemical analysis to the living bodies which have yielded them. One fact, at any rate, is out of reach of such refine- * Before taking up the last point, " unity of substantial compo- sition," Huxley briefly summarizes the two points already treated, " unity of power or faculty," and " unity of form." 34 THE PHYSTCAL BASIS OF LIFE. ments, and this is, that all the forms of protoplasm which have yet been examined contain the four ele- ments, carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, in very complex union, and that they behave similarly towards several re-agents. To this complex combination, the * nature of which has never been determined with exact ness, the name of Proteine has been applied. And if we use this term with such caution as may properly arise out of our comparative ignorance of the things for which it stands, it may be truly said, that all pro- ia toplasm is proteinaceous, or, as the white, or albumen, of an egg is one of the commonest examples of a nearly pure proteine matter, we may say that all living matter is more or less albuminoid. Perhaps it would not yet be safe to say that all forms 15 of protoplasm are affected by the direct action of electric shocks; and yet the number of cases in which the contraction of protoplasm is shown to be affected by this agency increases every day. Nor can it be affirmed with perfect confidence, that 20 all forms of protoplasm are liable to undergo that peculiar coagulation at a temperature of 40 50 centigrade, which has been called " heat-stiffening," though Klihne's beautiful researches have proved this . occurrence to take place in so many and such diverse 25 living beings, that it is hardly rash to expect that the law holds good for all. Enough has, perhaps, been said to prove the existence of a general uniformity in the character of the pro 30 toplasm, or physical basis, of life, in whatever group of living beings it may be studied. But it will be under- THOMAS HENR Y HUXLE Y. ..35 stood that this general uniformity by no means excludes any amount of special modifications of the fundamental substance. The mineral, carbonate of lime, assumes an immense diversity of characters, though no one 5 doubts that, under all these Protean changes, it is one and the same thing. And now, what is the ultimate fate, and what the origin, of the matter of life ? Is it, as some of the older naturalists supposed, 10 diffused throughout the universe in molecules, which are indestructible and unchangeable in themselves ; but, in endless transmigration, unite in innumerable permutations, into the diversified forms of life we know ? Or, is the matter of life composed of ordinary matter, 15 differing from it only in the manner in which its atoms are aggregated ? Is it built up of ordinary matter, and again resolved into ordinary matter when its work is done ? Modern science does not hesitate a moment between 20 these alternatives. Physiology writes over the portals of life "Debemur morti nos nostraque," with a profounder meaning than the Roman poet at- tached to that melancholy line. Under whatever dis- guise it takes refuge, whether fungus or oak, worm or 25 man, the living protoplasm not only ultimately dies and is resolved into its mineral and lifeless constitu- ents, but is always dying, and, strange as the paradox may sound, could not live unless it died. In the wonderful story of the " Peau de Chagrin, " 30 the hero becomes possessed of a magical wild ass' 36 THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF LIFE. skin, which yields him the means of gratifying all his wishes. But its surface represents the duration of the proprietor's life ; and for every satisfied desire the skin shrinks in proportion to the intensity of fruition, until at length life and the last handbreadth of the 5 peau de chagrin, disappear with the gratification of a last wish. Balzac's studies had led him over a wide range of thought and speculation, and his shadowing forth of physiological truth in this strange story may have been 10 intentional. At any rate, the matter of life is a veri- table peau de chagrin, and for every vital act it is some* what the smaller. All work implies waste, aud the work of life results, directly or indirectly, in the waste of protoplasm. 15 Every word uttered by a speaker costs him some physical loss; and, in the strictest sense, he burns that others may have light so much eloquence, so much of his body resolved into carbonic acid, water, and urea. It is clear that this process of expenditure 20 cannot go on forever. But, happily, the protoplasmic peau de chagrin differs from Balzac's in its capacity of being repaired, and brought back to its full size, after every exertion. For example, this present lecture, whatever its intel- 2 5 lectual worth to you, has a certain physical value to me, which is, conceivably, expressible by the number of grains of protoplasm and other bodily substance wasted in maintaining my vital processes during its delivery. Myfleau de chagrin will be distinctly smaller at the end 3 of the discourse than it was at the beginning. By and by, I shall probably have recourse to the substance ; THOMAS HENRY HVXLEY. 37 commonly called mutton, for the purpose of stretching it back to its original size. Now this mutton was once the living protoplasm, more or less modified, of another animal a sheep. As I shall eat it, it is the same 5 matter altered, not only by death, but by exposure to sun- dry artificial operations in the process of cooking. But these changes, whatever be their extent, have not rendered it incompetent to resume its old functions as matter of life. A singular inward laboratory, which :o I possess, will dissolve a certain portion of the modified protoplasm ; the solution so formed will pass into my veins ; and the subtle influences to which it will then be subjected will convert the dead protoplasm into liv- ing protoplasm, and transubstantiate sheep into man. r 5 Nor is this all. If digestion were a thing to be trifled with, I might sup upon lobster, and the matter of life of the crustacean would undergo the same wonderful . metamorphosis into humanity. And were I to return to my own place by sea, and undergo shipwreck, the 20 crustacean might, and probably would, return the compli- ment, and demonstrate our common nature by turning my protoplasm into living lobster. Or, if nothing better were to be had, I might supply my wants with mere bread, and I should find the protoplasm of the 25 wheat-plant to be convertible into man, with no more trouble than that of the sheep, and with far less, I fancy, than that of the lobster. Hence it appears to be a matter of no great moment what animal, or what plant, I lay under contribution 30 for protoplasm, and the fact speaks volumes for the general identity of that substance in all living beings. I share this catholicity of assimilation with other 38 THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF LIFE. animals, all of which, so far as we know, could thrive equally well on the protoplasm of any of their fellows, or of any plant ; but here the assimilative powers of the animal world cease. A solution of smelling-salts in water, with an infinitesimal proportion of some other 5 saline matters, contains all the elementary bodies which enter into the composition of protoplasm ; but, as T need hardly say, a hogshead of that fluid would not keep a hungry man from starving, nor would it save any animal whatever from a like fate. An animal can- IG not make protoplasm, but must take it ready-made from some other animal, or some plant the animal's highest feat of constructive chemistry being to convert dead protoplasm into that living matter of life which is appropriate to itself. 15 Therefore, in seeking for the origin of protoplasm, we must eventually turn to the vegetable world. A fluid containing carbonic acid, water, and nitrogenous salts, which offers such a Barmecide feast to the animal, is a table richly spread to multitudes of plants ; and, 20 with a due supply of only such materials, many a plant will not only maintain itself in vigor, but grow and multiply until it has increased a million-fold, or a mill- ion million-fold, the quantity of protoplasm which it originally possessed ; in this way building up the matter 25 of life, to an indefinite extent, from the common matter of the universe. Thus, the animal can only raise the complex substance of dead protoplasm to the higher power, as one may say, of living protoplasm ; while the plant can raise the less 3 C complex substances carbonic acid, water, and nitroge- nous sa>" to the same stage of living protoplasm, if not THOMAS HENR Y HUXLE Y. 39 to the same level. But the plant also has its limitations. Some of the fungi, for example, appear to need highei compounds to start with ; and no known plant can live upon the uncompounded elements of protoplasm. A 5 plant supplied with pure carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, phosphorus, sulphur, and the like, would as infallibly die as the animal in his bath of smelling-salts, though it would be surrounded by all the constituents of protoplasm. Nor, indeed, need the process of simplifi- 10 cation of vegetable food be carried so far as this, in order to arrive at the limit of the plant's thaumaturgy. Let water, carbonic acid, and all the other needful con- stituents be supplied except nitrogenous salts, and an ordinary plant will still be unable to manufacture 1 5 protoplasm. Thus the matter of life, so far as we know it (and we have no right to speculate on any other), breaks up, in consequence of that continual death which is the con- dition of its manifesting vitality, into carbonic acid, 20 water, and nitrogenous compounds, which certainly possess no properties but those of ordinary matter. And out of these same forms of ordinary matter, and from none which are simpler, the vegetable world builds up all the protoplasm which keeps the animal world a- ,< going. Plants are the accumulators of the power which animals distribute and disperse.* * The rest of the paper is an argument based upon the exposi- tion. III. Gbaracter and policy of Gbarles tbe Seconfc. JOHN RICHARD GREEN, 1837-1883. This extract follows a passage discussing the changes wrought in England by the Commonwealth and by the Restoration, Chap- ter I., Book VIII., John Richard Green's " History of the English People." New York, 1880. The historian, in order to make vivid to the reader his concep- tion of the character and policy of Charles the Second, uses bits of personal description and scraps of narrative, subordinated to the general purpose of exposition ; and, in so far as space per- mits, he shows each trait in the concrete form of word and deed. For example, the attitude of Charles towards the House of Lords is expressed in the king's remark that the debates there " amused " him; This method of Green's is in essence that of the story- teller, who displays a man's character by letting him talk and act before us ; and this history is entertaining, partly because Eliza- beth, James the First, Cromwell, Charles the Second, and Wai- pole are made to live in its pages by the same literary device by which Tom Jones, Dr. Primrose, and Becky Sharp live in the pages of fiction. CHANGED to the very core, yet hardly conscious of the change, drifting indeed steadily towards a wider knowl- edge and a firmer freedom, but still a mere medley of Puritan morality and social revolt, of traditional loyalty and political scepticism, of bigotry and free $ inquiry, of science and Popish plots, the England of the 40 JOHN RICHARD GREEN. 41 Restoration was reflected in its King. What his sub- jects saw in Charles the Second was a pleasant, brown- faced gentleman playing with his spaniels, or drawing caricatures of his ministers, or flinging cakes to the water- 5 fowl in the park. To all outer seeming Charles was the most consummate of idlers. " He delighted," says one of his courtiers, " in a bewitching kind of pleasure called sauntering." The business-like Pepys discovered, as he brought his work to the Council Board, that " the King 10 do mind nothing but pleasures, and hates the very sight or thoughts of business." That Charles had great nat- ural parts no one doubted. In his earlier days of defeat and danger he showed a cool courage and presence of mind which never failed him in the many perilous 15 moments of his reign. His temper was pleasant and social, his manners perfect, and there was a careless freedom and courtesy in his address which won over everybody who came into his presence. His education indeed had been so grossly neglected that he could 20 hardly read a plain Latin book ; but his natural, quick- ness and intelligence showed itself in his pursuit of chemistry and anatomy, and in the interest he showed in the scientific inquiries of the Royal Society. Like Peter the Great his favorite study was that of naval 25 architecture, and he piqued himself on being a clever shipbuilder. He had some little love too for art and poetry, and a taste for music. But his shrewdness and vivacity showed themselves most in his endless talk. He was fond of telling stories, and he told them with 30 a good deal of grace and humor. He held his own fairly with the wits of his Court, and bandied repartees on equal terms with Sedley or Buckingham. Even Roches- 42 POLICY OF CHARLES THE SECOND. ter in his merciless epigram was forced to own that " Charles never said a foolish thing." He had inherited in fact his grandfather's gift of pithy sayings, and his habitual irony often gave an amusing turn to them. When his brother, the most unpopular man in Eng- 5 land, solemnly warned him of plots against his life, Charles laughingly bade him set all fear aside. " They will never kill me, James," he said, " to make you king." But courage and wit and ability seemed to have been 10 bestowed on Charles in vain. He only laughed when Tom Killigrew told him frankly that badly as things were going on there was one man whose industry could set them right, "and this is one Charles Stuart, who now spends his time in using his lips about the 15 Court and hath no other employment." Charles made no secret in fact of his hatred of business. Nor did he give to outer observers any sign of ambition. The one thing he seemed in earnest about was sensual pleasure, and he took his pleasure with a cynical shamelessness 20 which roused the disgust even of his shameless courtiers. Mistress followed mistress, and the guilt of a troop of profligate women was blazoned to the world by the gift of titles and estates. ... But Charles was far from being content with a single form of self-indulgence. Gam- 25 bling and drinking helped to fill up the vacant moments when he could no longer toy with his favorites or bet at Newmarket. No thought of remorse or of shame seems ever to have crossed his mind. " He could not think God would make a man miserable," he said once, 30 " only for taking a little pleasure out of the way." From shame he was shielded by his cynical disbelief in human JOHN RICHARD GREEN. 43 virtue. Virtue indeed he regarded simply as a trick by which clever hypocrites imposed upon fools. Honor among men seemed to him as mere a pretence as chastity among women. Gratitude he had none, for he looked 5 upon self-interest as the only motive of men's actions, and though soldiers had died and women had risked their lives for him, " he loved others as little as he thought they loved him." But if he felt no gratitude for benefits, he felt no resentment for wrongs. He was 10 incapable either of love or of hate. The only feeling he retained for his fellow-men was that of an amused contempt. It was difficult for Englishmen to believe that any real danger to liberty could come from an idler and a 15 voluptuary such as Charles the Second. But in the very difficulty of believing this lay half the King's strength. He had in fact no taste whatever for the despotism of the Stuarts who had gone before him. His shrewdness laughed his grandfather's theories of 20 Divine Right down the wind, while his indolence made such a personal administration as that which his father delighted in burthensome to him. He was too humor- ous a man to care for the pomp and show of power, and too good-natured a man to play the tyxant. But 25 he believed as firmly as his father or his grandfather had believed in his right to a full possession of the older prerogatives of the Crown. He looked on Parlia- ments as they had looked on them with suspicion and jealousy. He clung as they had clung to the dream of 30 a dispensing power over the execution of the laws. He regarded ecclesiastical affairs as lying within his own personal control, and viewed the interference of the 44 POLICY OF CHARLES THE SECOND. two Houses with church matters as a sheear usurpation. Above all he detested the notion of ministerial responsi- bility to any but the King, or of a Parliamentary right to interfere in any way with the actual administration of public affairs. " He told Lord Essex," Burnet says, 5 " that he did not wish to be like a Grand Signior, with some mutes about him, and bags of bowstrings to strangle men ; but he did not think he was a king so long as a company of fellows were looking into his actions, and examining his ministers as well as his 10 accounts." " A king," he thought, " who might be checked, and have his ministers called to an account, was but a king in name." In other words Charles had no settled plan of tyranny, but he meant to rule as independently as he could, and 15 from the beginning to the end of his reign there never was a moment when he was not doing something to carry out his aim. But he carried it out in a tentative, irregular fashion which it was as hard to detect as to meet. Whenever there was any strong opposition he 20 gave way. If popular feeling demanded the dismissal of his ministers, he dismissed them. If it protested against his declaration of religious indulgence, he recalled it. If it cried for victims in the frenzy of the Popish Plot, he gave it victims till the frenzy was at an end. It was 25 easy for Charles to yield and to wait, and just as easy for him to take up the thread of his purpose afresh the moment the pressure was over. There was one fixed resolve in fact which overrode every other thought in the King's mind, and this was a resolve " not to set 30 out on his travels again." His father had fallen through a quarrel with the two Houses, and Charles was de- JOHN RICHARD GREEN. 45 termined to remain on good terms with the Parliament till he was strong enough to pick a quarrel to his profit At no time has party strife raged more fiercely ; in no reign has the temper of the Parliament been more 5 threatening to the Crown. But the cynicism of Charles enabled him to ride out storms which would have wrecked a better and a nobler King. He treated the Lords with an easy familiarity which robbed opposition of its seriousness. " Their debates amused him," he 10 said in his indolent way; and he stood chatting before the fire while peer after peer poured invectives on his ministers, and laughed louder than the rest when Shaftesbury directed his coarsest taunts at the barren- ness of the Queen. Courtiers were entrusted with the 1 S secret "management" of the Commons; obstinate country gentlemen were brought to the Royal closet to kiss the King's hand and listen to the King's pleasant stories of his escape after Worcester ; and still more obstinate country gentlemen were bribed. Where 20 bribes, flattery and management failed Charles was content to yield and to wait till his time came again. IV tTbe Ifntevptetation of tbe Constitution. JAMES BRYCE, 1838. This selection is the twenty-third chapter of Volume I. of Bryce's * American Commonwealth." This work, first published in 1888, has since passed through several editions and has undergone con- siderable revision. The text here, however, is that of the first edition. Like the extract from Huxley, this chapter is notable for the careful division and arrangement of material, and for the illus- trative examples. The latter, however, are here often given in the form of notes. THE Constitution of England is contained in hun- dreds of volumes of statutes and reported cases ; the Constitution of the United States (including the amend- ments) may be read through aloud in twenty-three 5 minutes. It is about half as long as St. Paul's first Epistle to the Corinthians, and only one-fortieth part as long as the Irish Land Act of 1881. History knows few instruments which in so few words lay down equally momentous rules on a vast range of matters of f othe highest importance and complexity. The Conven- tion of 1787 were well advised in making their draft short, because it was essential that the people should comprehend it, because fresh differences of view would 46 JAMES BRYCE. 47 have emerged the further they had gone into details, and because the more one specifies, the more one has to specify and to attempt the impossible task of pro- viding beforehand for all contingencies. These sages 5 were therefore content to lay down a few general rules and principles, leaving some details to be filled in by congressional legislation, and foreseeing that for others it would be necessary to trust to interpretation. It is plain that the shorter a law is, the more general 10 must its language be, and the greater therefore the need for interpretation. So too the greater the range of a law, and the more numerous and serious the cases which it governs, the more frequently will its meaning be canvassed. There have been statutes dealing with 1 5 private law, such as the Lex Aquilia at Rome and the Statute of Frauds in England, on which many volumes of commentaries have been written, and thousands of juristic and judicial constructions placed. Much more then much we expect to find great public and constitu- zotional enactments subjected to the closest sqrutiny in order to discover every shade of meaning which their words can be made to bear. Probably no writing ex- cept the New Testament, the Koran, the Pentateuch, and the Digest of the Emperor Justinian, has employed 25 so much ingenuity and labor as the American Consti- tution, in sifting, weighing, comparing, illustrating, twisting, and torturing its text. Its resembles theologi- cal writings in this, that both, while taken to be im- mutable guides, have to be adapted to a constantly 30 changing world, the one to political condition which vary from year to year and never return to their former state, the other to new phases of thought and emotion, 48 INTERPRETATION OF THE CONSTITUTION. new beliefs in the realms of physical and ethical phi- losophy. There must, therefore, be a development in constitutional formulas, just as there is in theological. It will come, it cannot be averted, for it comes in virtue of a law of nature : all that men can do is to shut their 5 eyes to it, and conceal the reality of change under the continued use of time-honored phrases, trying to per- suade themselves that these phrases mean the same thing to their minds to-day as they meant generations or centuries ago. As a great living theologian says, 10 " In a higher world it is otherwise ; but here below to live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often." * The Constitution of the United States is so concise and so general in its terms, that even had America 15 been as slowly moving a country as China, many ques- tions must have arisen on the interpretation of the fundamental law which would have modified its aspect. But America has been the most swiftly expanding of all countries. Hence the questions that have pre-2c sented themselves have often related to matters which the framers of the Constitution could not have con- templated. Wiser than Justinian before them or Napoleon after them, they foresaw that their work would need to be elucidated by judicial commentary. 25 But they were far from conjecturing the enormous strain to which some of their expressions would be subjected in the effort to apply them to new facts. I must not venture on any general account of the in- terpretation of the Constitution, nor attempt to set 30 * Newman, " Essay on Development," p, 39. Bryce. JAMES BRYCE. 49 forth the rules of construction laid down by judges and commentators, for this is a vast matter and a matter for law books. All that this chapter has to do is to indicate, very generally, in what way and with 5 what results the Constitution has been expanded, de- veloped, modified, by interpretation ; and with that view there are three points that chiefly need discussion : (i) the authorities entitled to interpret the Constitu- tion, (2) the main principles followed in determining 10 whether or no the Constitution has granted, certain powers, (3) the checks on possible abuses of the inter- preting power. I. To whom does it belong to interpret the Consti- tution ? Any question arising in a legal proceeding as 15 to the meaning and application of this fundamental law will evidently be settled by the courts of law. Every court is equally bound to pronounce and com- petent to pronounce on such questions, a State court no less than a Federal court ; but as all the more im- 2oportant questions are carried by appeal to the supreme Federal court, it is practically that court whose opinion determines them. Where the Federal courts have declared the mean- ing of a law, every one ought to accept and guide him- 25 self by their deliverance. But there are always ques- tions of construction which have not been settled by the courts, some because they have not happened to arise in a lawsuit, others because they are such as can- not arise in a lawsuit. As regards such points, every 30 authority, Federal or State, as well as every citizen, must be guided by the best view he or they can form of the true intent and meaning of the Constitution, 4 50 INTERPRETATION OF THE CONSTITUTION. taking, of course, the risk that this view may turn out to be wrong. There are also points of construction on which every court, following a well-established practice, will refuse to decide, because they are deemed to be of " a purely 5 political nature," a vague description, but one which could be made more specific only by an enumeration of the cases which have settled the practice. These points are accordingly left to the discretion of the ex- ecutive and legislative powers, each of which forms its 10 view as to the matters falling within its sphere, and in acting on that view is entitled to the obedience of the citizens and of the States also.* It is therefore an error to suppose that the judiciary is the only interpreter of the Constitution, for a large i^ field is left open to the other authorities of the govern- ment, whose views need not coincide, so that a dispute between those authorities, although turning on the meaning of the Constitution, may be incapable of being settled by any legal proceeding. This causes 20 no great confusion, because the decision, whether of the political or the judicial authority, is conclusive so far as regards the particular controversy or matter passed upon. The above is the doctrine now generally accepted in 25 America. But at one time the Presidents claimed the much wider right of being, except in questions of pure private law, generally and prima facie entitled to inter- pret the Constitution for themselves, and to act on their own interpretation, even when it ran counter to 30 * Assuming, of course, that the matter is one which comes within the range of Federal competence. Bryce. JAMES BRYCE. 51 that delivered by the Supreme court. Thus Jefferson denounced the doctrine laid down in the famous judg- ment of Chief-Justice Marshall in the case of Marbury v. Madison ; * thus Jackson insisted that the Supreme 5 court was mistaken in holding that Congress had power to charter the United States bank, and that he, knowing better than the court did what the Constitu- tion meant to permit, was entitled to attack the bank as an illegal institution, and to veto a bill proposing to 10 re-charter it.f Majorities in Congress have more than once claimed for themselves the same independence. But of late years both the executive and the legislature have practically receded from the position which the language formerly used seemed to assert ; while, on T 5the other hand, the judiciary, by their tendency during the whole course of their history to support every exer- cise of power which they did not deem plainly uncon- stitutional, have left a wide field to those authorities. * As the court dismissed upon another point in the case the .proceedings against Mr. Secretary Madison, the question whether Marshall was right did not arise in a practical form. Bryce. f There was, however, nothing unconstitutional in the course which Jackson actually took in withdrawing the deposits from the United States Bank and in vetoing the bill for a re-charter. It is still generally admitted that a President has the right in consider- ing a measure coming to him from Congress to form his own judgment, not only as to its expediency but as to its conforma- bility to the Constitution. Judge Cooley observes to me : " If Jackson sincerely believed that the Constitution had been violated in the first and second charter, he was certainly not bound, when a third was proposed, to surrender his opinion in obedience to precedent. The question of approving a new charter was politi- cal ; and he was entirely within the line of duty in refusing it fol any reasons which, to his own mind, seemed sufficient." Bryce. 52 INTERPRETATION OF THE CONSTITUTION. If the latter have not used this freedom to stretch the Constitution even more than they have done, it is not solely the courts of law, but also public opinion and their own professional associations (most presidents, ministers, and congressional leaders having been 5 lawyers) that have checked them. II. The Constitution has been expanded by con- struction in two ways. Powers have been exercised, sometimes by the President, more often by the legisla- ture, in passing statutes, and the question has arisen 10 whether the" powers so exercised were rightfully exer- cised, i. e. were really contained in the Constitution. When the question was resolved in the affirmative by the court, the power has been henceforth recognized as a part of the Constitution, although, of course, 15 liable to be subsequently denied by a reversal of the decision which established it. This is one way. The other is where some piece of State legislation alleged to. contravene the Constitution has been judicially de- cided to contravene it, and to be therefore invalid. 20 The decision, in narrowing the limits of State authority, tends to widen the prohibitive authority of the Consti- tution, and confirms it in a range and scope of action which was previously doubtful. Questions of the above kinds sometimes arise as 25 questions of Interpretation in the strict sense of the term, /". e. as questions of the meaning of a term or phrase which is so far ambiguous that it might be taken either to cover or not to cover a case apparently contemplated by the people when they enacted the 30 Constitution. Sometimes they are rather questions to which we may apply the name of Construction, /. e. the JAMES BRYCE. 53 case that has arisen is one apparently not contemplated by the enacters of the Constitution, or one which, though possibly contemplated, has for brevity's sake been omitted ; but the Constitution has nevertheless 5 to be applied to its solution. In the former case the enacting power has said something which bears, or is supposed to bear, on the matter, and the point to be determined is, what do the words mean ? In the latter it has not directly referred to the matter, and the ques- totionis, Can anything be gathered from its language which covers the point that has arisen, which estab- lishes a principle large enough to reach and include an unmentioned case, indicating what the enacting author- ity would have said had the matter been present to its 1 5 mind, or had it thought fit to enter on an enumeration of specific instances ? * As the Constitution is not * For example, the question whether an agreement carried out between a State and an individual by a legislative act of a State is a " contract " within the meaning of the prohibition against im- pairing the obligation of a contract, is a question of interpretation proper, for it turns on the determination of the meaning of the term " contract." The question whether Congress had power to pass an act emancipating the slaves of persons aiding in a re- bellion was a question of construction, because the case did not directly arise under any provision of the Constitution, and was " apparently not contemplated by the framers thereof. It was a question which had to be solved by considering what the war powers contained in the Constitution might be taken to imply. The question whether the National government has power to issue treasury notes is also a question of construction, because, although this is a case which may possibly have been contem- plated when the Constitution was enacted, it is to be determined by ascertaining whether the power " to borrow money " overs this particular method of borrowing. There is no ambiguity 54 INTERPRETATION OF THE CONSTITUTION. only a well-drafted instrument with few ambiguities but also a short instrument which speaks in very general terms, mere interpretation has been far less difficult than construction. It is through the latter chiefly that the Constitution has been, and still con- 5 tinues to be, developed and expanded. The nature of these expansions will appear from the nature of the Federal government. It is a government of delegated and specified powers. The people have entrusted to it, not the plenitude of their own authority but certain 10 enumerated functions, and its lawful action is limited to these functions. Hence, when the Federal execu- tive does an act, or the Federal legislature passes a law, the question arises Is the power to do this act or pass this law one of the powers which the people 15 have by the Constitution delegated to their agents ? The power may never have been exerted before. It may not be found expressed, in so many words, in the Constitution. Nevertheless it may, upon the true con- struction of that instrument, taking one clause with 20 another, be held to be therein contained. Now the doctrines laid down by Chief-Justice Mar- shall, and on which the courts have constantly since proceeded, may be summed up in two propositions. i. Every power alleged to be vested in the National 25 government, or any organ thereof, must be affirmatively shown to have been granted. There is no presump- about the word " borrow "; the difficulty is to pronounce which out of various methods of borrowing, some of which probably were contemplated, can be properly deemed, on a review of the whole financial attributes and functions of the National govern- ment, to be included within the borrowing power. Bryce. JAMES BRYCE. 55 tion in favor of the existence of a power ; on the con- trary, the burden of proof lies on those who assert its existence, to point out something in the Constitution which, either expressly or by necessary implication, 5 confers it. Just as an agent, claiming to act on behalf of his principal, must make out by positive evidence that his principal gave him the authority he relies on ; so Congress, or those who rely on one of its statutes, are bound to show that the people have authorized the 10 legislature to pass the statute. . The search for the power will be conducted in a spirit of strict exactitude, and if there be found in the Constitution nothing which directly or impliedly conveys it, then whatever the executive or legislature of the National govern- 15 ment, or both of them together, may have done in the persuasion of its existence, must be deemed null and void, like the act of any other unauthorized agent.* 2. When once the grant of a power by the people to the National government has been established, that 20 power will be construed broadly. The strictness ap- plied in determining its existence gives place to liber- ality in supporting its application. The people so * For instance, several years ago a person summoned as a wit- ness before a committee of the House of Representatives was imprisoned by order of the House for refusing to answer certain questions put to him. He sued the sergeant-at-arms for false imprisonment, and recovered damages, the Supreme court holding that as the Constitution could not be shown to have conferred on either House of Congress any power to punish for contempt, that power (though frequently theretofore exercised) did not ex- ist, and the order of the House therefore constituted no defence for the sergeant's act (Kilbourn v. Thompson, 103 United States, 168). Brycc. 56 INTERPRETATION OF THE CONSTITUTION. Marshall and his successors have argued when they confer a power, must be deemed to confer a wide dis- cretion as to the means whereby it is to be used in their service. For their main object is that it should be used vigorously and wisely, which it cannot be if the 5 choice of methods is narrowly restricted ; and while the people may well be chary in delegating powers to their agents, they must be presumed, when they do grant these powers, to grant them with confidence in the agents' judgment, allowing all that freedom in using ic one means or another to attain the desired end which is needed to ensure success.^ This, which would in any case be the common-sense view, is fortified by the language of the Constitution, which authorizes Con- gress "to make all laws which shall be necessary and 15 proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any depart- ment or office thereof." The sovereignty of the Na- tional government, therefore, u though limited to speci- 20 fied objects, is plenary as to those objects " and supreme in its sphere. Congress, which cannot go one step beyond the circle of action which the Constitution has traced for it, may within that circle choose any means which it deems apt for executing its powers, 25 and is in its choice of means subject to no review by the courts in their functions of interpreters, because * For instance, Congress having power to declare war, has power to prosecute it by all means necessary for success, and to acquire territory either by conquest or treaty. Having power to borrow money, Congress may, if it thinks fit, issue treasury notes, and may make them legal tender. Bryce* JAMES BRYCE. 57 the people have made their representatives the sole and absolute judges of the mode in which the granted powers shall be employed. This doctrine of implied powers, and the interpretation of the words " necessary 5 and proper/' were for many years a theme of bitter and incessant controversy among American lawyers and publicists.* The history of the United States is * " The powers of the government are limited, and its limits are not to be transcended. But the sound construction of the Consti- tution must allow to the national legislature that discretion with respect to the means by which the powers it confers are to be carried into execution, which will enable that body to perform the high duties assigned to it in the manner most beneficial to the people. Let the end be legitimate, let it be within the scope of the Constitution, and all means which are appropriate, which are plainly adapted to that end, which are not prohibited but con- sistent with the letter and spirit of the Constitution, are constitu- tional." Marshall, C.-J., in M'Culloch v. Maryland (4 Wheat. 316). This is really a working-out of one of the points of Hamil- ton's famous argument in favor of the constitutionality of a United States bank : " Every power vested in a government is in its nature sovereign, and includes by force of the term a right to employ all the means requisite and fairly applicable to the attain- ment of the ends of such power, and which are not precluded by restrictions and exceptions specified in the Constitution." "Works" (Lodge's ed.), vol. iii. p. 181. Judge Hare sums up the matter by saying, " Congress is sovereign as regards the objects and within the limits of the Constitution. It may use all proper and suitable means for carry- ing the powers conferred by the Constitution into effect. The means best suited at one time may be inadequate at another ; hence the need for vesting a large discretion in Congress. . . . ' Necessary and proper ' are therefore, as regards legislation, nearly if not quite synonymous, that being 'necessary ' which is suited to the object and calculated to attain the end in view." " Lectures on Constitutional Law," p. 78. Bryce, 58 INTERPRETATION OF THE CONSTITUTION. in a large measure a history of the arguments which sought -to enlarge or restrict its import. One school of statesmen urged that a lax construction would prac- tically leave the States at the mercy of the National government, and remove those checks on the latter 5 which the Constitution was designed to create ; while the very fact that some powers were specifically granted must be taken to import that those not specified were withheld, according to the old maxim expressio unius exclusio alterius, which Lord Bacon con- ic cisely explains by saying, " as exception strengthens the force of a law in cases not excepted, so enumera- tion weakens it in cases not enumerated." It was replied by the opposite school that to limit the powers of the government to those expressly set forth in the 15 Constitution would render that instrument unfit to serve the purposes of a growing and changing nation, and would, by leaving men no legal means of attaining necessary but originally uncontemplated aims, provoke revolution and work the destruction of the Constitu- 20 tion itself.* This latter contention derived much support from the fact that there were certain powers that had not been mentioned in the Constitution, but which were so obviously incident to a national government that 23 they must be deemed to be raised by implication. f * See the philosophical remarks of Story, J., in Martin v. Hunter 1 s Lessee (i Wheat, p. 304 sqq.) Bryce. t Stress was also laid on the fact that whereas the Articles of Confederation of 1781 contained (Art. ii.) the expression, " Each State retains every power and jurisdiction and right not expressly delegated to the United States in Congress assembled," th? JAMES BRYCE. 59 For instance, the only offences which Congress is ex. pressly empowered to punish are treason, the counter- feiting of the coin or securities of the government, and piracies and other offences against the law of nations. 5 But it was very early held that the power to declare other acts to be offences against the United States, and punish them as such, existed as a necessary ap- pendage to various general powers. So the power to regulate commerce covered the power to punish offences to obstructing commerce ; the power to manage the post- office included the right to fix penalties on the theft of letters ; and, in fact, a whole mass of criminal law grew up as a sanction to the civil laws which Congress had been directed to pass. 15 The three lines along which this development of the implied powers of the government has chiefly pro- gressed, have been those marked out by the three express powers of taxing and borrowing money, of regulating commerce, and of carrying on war. Each 20 has produced a progeny of subsidiary powers, some of which have in their turn been surrounded by an unex- pected offspring. Thus from the taxing and borrowing powers there sprang the powers to charter a national bank and exempt its branches and its notes from taxa- *5 tion by a State (a serious restriction on State authority), to create a system of custom-houses and revenue cut- ters, to establish a tariff for the protection of native industry. Thus the regulation of commerce has been Constitution merely says (Amendment x.), "The powers not granted to the United States are reserved to the States respectively or to the people," omitting the word " expressly." Bryce. 60 INTERPRETATION OF THE CONSTITUTION. construed to include legislation regarding every kind of transportation of goods and passengers, whether from abroad or from one State to another, regarding navigation, maritime and internal pilotage, maritime contracts, etc., together with the control of all navigable 5 waters,* the construction of all public works helpful to commerce between States or with foreign countries, the power to prohibit immigration, and finally a power to establish a railway commission and control all inter- State traffic.f The war power proved itself even more 10 elastic. The executive and the majority in Congress found themselves during the War of Secession obliged to stretch this power to cover many acts trenching on the ordinary rights of the States and of individuals, till there ensued something approaching a suspension 15 * Navigable rivers and lakes wholly within the limits of a State, and not accessible from without it, are under the authority of that State. Bryce. \ The case of Gibbons v. Ogden supplies an interesting illustra- tion of the way in which this doctrine of implied powers works itself out. The State of New York had, in order to reward Fulton and Livingston for their services in introducing steam- boats, passed a statute giving them an exclusive right of naviga- ting the Hudson river with steamers. A case having arisen in which this statute was invoked, it was alleged that the statute was invalid, because inconsistent with an Act passed by Congress. The question followed, Was Congress entitled to pass an Act dealing with the navigation of the Hudson ? and it was held that the power to regulate commerce granted to Congress by the Constitution implied a power to legislate for navigation on such rivers as the Hudson, and that Congress having exercised that power, the action of the States on the subject was necessarily excluded. By this decision a vast field of legislation was secured to Congress and closed to the States. Bryce. JAMES BRYCE. 61 of constitutional guarantees in favor of the central government. The courts have occasionally gone even further afield, and have professed to deduce certain powers of 5 the legislature from the sovereignty inherent in the National government. In its last decision on the legal tender question, a majority of the Supreme court seems to have placed upon this ground, though with special reference to the section enabling Congress to borrow 10 money, its affirmance of that competence of Congress to declare paper money a legal tender for debts, which the earlier decision of 1871 had referred to the war power. This position evoked a controversy of wide scope, for the question what sovereignty involves is 15 evidently at least as much a question of political as of legal science, and may be pushed to great lengths upon considerations with which law proper has little to do. The above-mentioned instances of development have been worked out by the courts of law. But others are 20 due to the action of the executive, or of the executive arid Congress conjointly. Thus, in 1803, President Jefferson negotiated and completed the purchase of Louisiana, the whole vast possessions of France be- yond the Mississippi. He believed himself to be ex- 25 ceeding any powers which the Constitution conferred , and desired to have an amendment to it passed, in order to validate his act. But Congress and the people did not share his scruples, and the approval of the legislature was deemed sufficient ratification for a step 30 of transcendent importance, which no provision of the Constitution bore upon. In 1807 and 1808 Congress laid, by two statutes, an embargo on all shipping in 62 INTERPRETATION OF THE CONSTITUTION. United States ports, thereby practically destroying the lucrative carrying trade of the New England -States. Some of these States declared the Act unconstitutional, arguing that a power to regulate commerce was not a power to annihilate it, and their courts held it to be 5 void. Congress, however, persisted for a year, and the Act, on which the Supreme court never formally pronounced, has been generally deemed within the Constitution, though Justice Story (who had warmly opposed it when he sat in Congress) remarks that it ic went to the extreme verge. More startling, and more far-reaching in their consequences, were the assump- tions of Federal authority made during the War of Se- cession by the executive and confirmed, some expressly, some tacitly, by Congress and the people.* It was ic only a few of these that came before the courts, and the courts, in some instances, disapproved them. But the executive continued to exert this extraordinary * See Judge Cooley's " History of Michigan," p. 353. The same eminent authority observes to me : " The President suspended the writ of habeas corpus. The courts held this action uncon- stitutional (it was subsequently confirmed by Congress), but he did not at once deem it safe to obey their judgment. Military commissioners, with the approval of the War Department and the President, condemned men to punishment for treason, but the courts released them, holding that the guaranties of liberty in the Constitution were as obligatory in war as in peace, and should be obeyed by all citizens, and all departments, and officers of government (Milligarfs case, 4 Wall. i). The courts held closely to the Constitution, but as happens in every civil war, a great many wrongs were done in the exercise of the war power for which no redress, or none that was adequate, could possibly be had." Inter arma silent leges must be always to some extent true, even under a Constitution like that of the United States. Bryce< JAMES BRYCR. 63 authority. Appeals made to the letter of the Constitu- tion by the minority were discredited by the fact that they were made by persons sympathizing with the Secessionists who were seeking to destroy it. So many 5 extreme things were done under the pressure of neces- sity that something less than these extreme things came to be accepted as a reasonable and moderate com- promise.* The best way to give an adequate notion of the 10 extent to which the outlines of the Constitution have been filled up by interpretation and construction, would be to take some of its more important sections and enumerate the decisions upon them and the doc- trines established by those decisions. This process 1 5 would, however, be irksome to any but a legal reader, and the legal reader may do it more agreeably for him- self by consulting one of the annotated editions of the Constitution. f He will there find that upon some pro- visions such as Art. i. 8 (powers of Congress), Art. i. 20 10 (powers denied to the States), Art. iii. 2 (extent of judicial power), there has sprung up a perfect forest of judicial constructions, working out the meaning and application of the few and apparently simple words of the original document into a variety of unforeseen 25 results. The same thing has more or less befallen * Such as the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, the emancipation of the slaves of persons aiding in the rebellion, the suspension of the statute of limitations, the practical extinction of State Banks by increased taxation laid on them under the general taxing power. Bryce. t Such as Desty's clear and compendious " Federal Constitu- tion Annotated." Bryce. 64 INTERPRETATION OF THE CONSTITUTION. nearly every section of the Constitution and of the fifteen amendments. The process shows no signs of stopping, nor can it, for the new conditions of econo- mics and politics bring up new problems for solution. But the most important work was that done during the 5 first half century, and especially by Chief-Justice Mar- shall during his long tenure of the presidency of the Supreme court (1801-1835). ^ t * s scarcely an exag- eration to call him, as an eminent American jurist has done, a second maker of the Constitution. I will not 10 borrow the phrase which said of Augustus that he found Rome of brick and left it of marble, because Marshall's function was not to change but to develop. The Constitution was, except of course as regards the political scheme of national government, which was 15 already well established, rather a ground plan than a city. It was, if I may pursue the metaphor, much what the site of Washington was at the beginning of this century, a symmetrical ground plan for a great city, but with only some tall edifices standing here and there 20 among fields and woods. Marshall left it what Wash- ington has now become, a splendid and commodious capital within whose ample bounds there are still some vacant spaces and some mean dwellings, but which, built up and beautified as it has been by the taste and 25 wealth of its rapidly growing population, is worthy to be the centre of a mighty nation. Marshall was, of course, only one among seven judges, but his majestic Intellect and the elevation of his character gave him such an ascendency, that he found himself only once 3^ in a minority on any constitutional question.* His * In that one case (Ogden v. Sanders) there was a bare majority fAMES BRYCE. 65 work of building up and working out the Constitution was accomplished not so much by the decisions he gave as by the judgments in which he expounded the principles of these decisions, judgments which for their 5 philosophical breadth, the luminous exactness of their reasoning, and the fine political sense which pervades them, have never been surpassed and rarely equalled by the most famous jurists of modern Europe or of ancient Rome. Marshall did not forget the duty of a 10 judge to decide nothing more than the suit before him requires, but he was wont to set forth the grounds of his decision in such a way as to show how they would fall to be applied in cases that had not yet arisen. He grasped with extraordinary force and clearness the car- 15 dinal idea that the creation of a national government implies the grant of all such subsidiary powers as are requisite to the effectuation of its main powers and purposes, but he developed and applied this idea with so much prudence and sobriety, never treading on 20 purely political ground, never indulging the temptation to theorize, but content to follow out as a lawyer the consequences of legal- principles, that the Constitution seemed not so much to rise under his hands to its full stature, as to be gradually unveiled by him till it stood 25 revealed in the harmonious perfection of the form which its framers had designed. That admirable flexi- against him, and professional opinion now approves the view which he took. See an extremely interesting address delivered to the American Bar Association in 1879 by Mr- Edward J. Phelps, who observes that when Marshall became Chief-Justice only two decisions on constitutional law had been pronounced by the court. Between that time and his death fifty-one were given. Bryce. 5 66 INTERPRETATION OF THE CONSTITUTION. bility and capacity for growth which characterize it beyond all other rigid or supreme constitutions, is largely due to him, yet not more to his courage than to his caution. We now come to the third question : How is the 5 interpreting authority restrained ? If the American Constitution is capable of being so developed by this expansive interpretation, what security do its written terms offer to the people and to the States ? What becomes of the special value claimed for Rigid consti- 10 tutions that they preserve the frame of government un- impaired in its essential merits, that they restrain the excesses of a transient majority, and (in Federations) the aggressions of a central authority ? The answer is two-fold. In the first place, the inter- 15 preting authority is, in questions not distinctly political, different from the legislature and from the executive. There is therefore a probability that it will disagree with either of them when they attempt to transgress the Constitution, and will decline to stretch the law so 20 as to sanction encroachments those authorities may have attempted. The fact that the interpreting author- ity is nowise amenable to the other two, and is com- posed of lawyers, imbued with professional habits, strengthens this probability. In point of fact, there 25 have been few cases, and those chiefly cases of urgency during the war, in which the judiciary has been even accused of lending itself to the designs of the other organs of government. The period when extensive in- terpretation was most active (1800-1835) was also the 30 period when the party opposed to a strong central government commanded Congress and the executive. JAMES BRYCE. 67 and so far from approving the course the court took, the dominant party then often complained of it. In the second place, there stands above and behind the legislature, the executive, and the judiciary, an- 5 other power, that of public opinion. The President, Congress, and the courts are all, the two former directly, the latter practically, amenable to the people, and anxious to be in harmony with the general current of its sentiment. If the people approve the way in which ro these authorities are interpreting and using the* Con* stitution, they go on ; if the people disapprove, they pause, or at least slacken their pace. Generally the people have approved of such action by the President cr Congress as has seemed justified by the needs of '5 the time, even though it may have gone beyond the letter of the Constitution : generally they have ap- proved the conduct of the courts whose legal interpre- tation has upheld such legislative or executive action. Public opinion sanctioned the purchase of Louisiana, 20 and the still bolder action of the executive in the Seces- sion War. It approved the Missouri compromise of 1820, which the Supreme court thirty-seven years after- wards declared to have been in excess of the powers of Congress. But it disapproved the Alien and Sedition 25 laws of 1798, and although these statutes were never pronounced unconstitutional by the courts, this popular censure has prevented any similar legislation since that time.* The people have, of course, much less exact notions of the Constitution than the legal profession or * So it disapproved strongly, in the northern States, of the judgments delivered by the majority of the Supreme court in the Dred Scott case. Brycc* 68 INTERPRETATION OF THE CONSTITUTION. the courts. But while they generally desire to see the powers of the government so far expanded as to enable it to meet the exigencies of the moment, they are suffi- ciently attached to its general doctrines, they suffi- ciently prize the protection it affords them against S their own impulses, to censure any interpretation which palpably departs from the old lines. And their censure is, of course, still more severe if the court seems to be acting at the bidding of a party. A singular result of the importance of constitutional 10 interpretation in the American government may be here referred to. It is this, x that the United States legislature has been very largely occupied in purely legal discussions. When it is proposed to legislate on a subject which has been heretofore little dealt with, 15 the opponents of a measure have two lines of defence. They may, as Englishmen would in a like case, argue that the measure is inexpedient. But they may also, which Englishmen cannot, argue that it is unconstitu- tional, /. e. illegal, because transcending the powers of 20 Congress. This is a question fit to be raised in Con- gress, not only as regards matters with which, as being purely political, the courts of law will refuse to inter- fere, but as regards all other matters also, because since a decision on the constitutionality of a statute 25 can never be obtained from the judges by anticipation, the legislature ought to consider whether they are act- ing within their competence. And it is a question on which a stronger case can often be made, and made with less exertion, than on the issue whether the 30 measure be substantially expedient. Hence it is usu- ally put in the fore-front of the battle, and argued with JAMES BRYCE. 69 great vigor and acumen by leaders who are probably more ingenious as lawyers than they are far-sighted as statesmen. A further consequence of this habit is pointed out 5 by one of the most thoughtful among American con- stitutional writers. Legal issues are apt to dwarf and obscure the more substantially important issues of principle and policy, distracting from these latter the attention of the nation as well as the skill of congres- 10 sional debaters. " The English legislature," says Judge Hare, " is free to follow any course that will promote the welfare of the State, and the inquiry is not, ' Has Parliament power to pass the Act?' but, ' Is it consistent with 1 5 principle, and such as the circumstances demand?' These are the material points, and if the public mind is satisfied as to them there is no further controversy. In the United States, on the other hand, the question primarily is one of power, and in the refined and subtle 20 discussion which ensues, right is too often lost sight of or treated as if it were synonymous with might. It is taken for granted that what the Constitution permits it also approves, and that measures which are legal cannot be contrary to morals." * 25 The interpretation of the Constitution has at times become so momentous as to furnish a basis for the formation of political parties ; and the existence of parties divided upon such questions has of course stimulated the interest with which points of legal inter- 3opretation have been watched and canvassed. Soon after the formation of the National government in 1789 * " Lectures on Constitutional Law," p. 135. Brycc* ;o INTERPRETATION- OF THE CONSTITUTION. two parties grew up, one advocating a strong central authority, the other championing the rights of the States. Of these parties the former naturally came to insist on a liberal, an expansive, perhaps a lax con- struction of the words of the Constitution, because the 5 more wide is the meaning placed upon its grant of powers, so much the wider are those powers themselves The latter party, on the other hand, was acting in pro- tection both of the States and of the individual citizen against the central government, when it limited by a ia strict and narrow interpretation of the fundamental instrument the powers which that instrument conveyed. The distinction which began in those early days has never since vanished. There has always been a party professing itself disposed to favor the central govern- 15 ment, and therefore a party of broad construction. There has always been a party claiming that it aimed at protecting the rights of the States, and therefore a party of strict construction. Some writers have gone so far as to deem these different views of interpreta-2o tion to be the foundation of all the political parties that have divided America. This view, however, in- verts the facts. It is not because men have differed in their reading of the Constitution that they have advo- cated or opposed an extension of Federal powers ; it 25 is their attitude on this substantial issue that has de- termined their attitude on the verbal one. Moreover, the two great parties have several times changed sides on the very question of interpretation. The purchase of Louisiana and the Embargo acts were the work of 30 the Strict Constructionists, while it was the Loose Constructionist party which protested against the latter JAMES BRYCE. 7! measure, and which, at the Hartford Convention of 1814, advanced doctrines of State rights almost amount ing to those subsequently asserted by South Carolina in 1832 and by the Secessionists of 1861. Parties in 5 America, as in most countries, have followed their temporary interest ; and if that interest happened to differ from some traditional party doctrine, they have explained the latter away. Whenever there has been a serious party conflict, it has been in reality a conflict ro over some living and practical issue, and only in form a debate upon canons of legal interpretation. What is remarkable, though natural enough in a country governed by a written instrument, is that every con- troversy has got involved with questions of constitu- iStional construction. When it was proposed to exert some power of Congress, as for instance to charter a national bank, to grant money for internal improve- ments, to enact a protective tariff, the opponents of these schemes could plausibly argue, and therefore of 20 course did argue, that they were unconstitutional. So any suggested interference with slavery in States or Territories was immediately declared to violate the State rights which the Constitution guaranteed. Thus every serious question came to be fought as a constitu 25 tional question. But as regards most questions, and certainly as regards the great majority of the party combatants, men did not attack or defend a proposal because they held it legally unsound or sound on the true construction of the Constitution, but alleged it to 30 be constitutionally wrong or right because they thought the welfare of the country, or at least their party in- terests, to be involved. Constitutional interpretation 72 INTERPRETATION OF THE CONSTITUTION. was a pretext rather than a cause, a matter of form rather than of substance. The results were both good and evil. They were good in so far as they made both parties profess them- selves defenders of the Constitution, zealous only that 5 it should be interpreted aright ; as they familiarized the people with its provisions, and made them vigilant critics of every legislative or executive act which could affect its working. They were evil in distracting public attention from real problems to the legal aspect of those ia problems, and in cultivating a habit of casuistry which threatened the integrity of the Constitution itself. Since the Civil War there has been much less of this casuistry because there have been fewer occasions for it, the Broad Construction view of the Constitution 15 having practically prevailed prevailed so far that the Supreme court now holds that the power of Congress to make paper money legal tender is incident to the sovereignty of the National government, and that a Democratic House of Representatives passes a bill giv- 20 ing a Federal commission vast powers over all the rail- ways which pass through more than one State. There is still a party inclined to strict construction, but the strictness which it upholds would have been deemed lax by the Broad Constructionists of thirty years ago. 25 The interpretation which has thus stretched the Con- stitution to cover powers once undreamt of, may be deemed a dangerous resource. But it must be remem- bered that even the constitutions we call rigid must make their choice between being bent or being broken. 30 The Americans have more than once bent their Consti- tution in order that they might not be forced to break it. V. TTbe <5taeco=s1Ftalfan Stocft* CHRISTIAN MATTHIAS THEODOR MOMM SEN, 1817. This discussion of the knowledge of the Graeco-Italian stock gained from a study of philology is from the second chapter of the first book of Mommsen's " History of Rome," published in German in 1853. The text is from the English edition of 1869, translated from the fourth German edition by the Rev. William P. Dickson, of Glasgow. DURING the period when the Indo-Germanic nations, which are now separated, still formed one stock, speak- ing the same language, they attained a certain stage of culture, and they had a vocabulary corresponding to it. 5 This vocabulary the several nations carried along with them, in its conventionally established use, as a com- mon dowry and a foundation for further structures of their own. In it we find not merely the simplest terms denoting existence, actions, perceptions, such as sum, 10 do, pater, the original echo of the impression which the external world made on the mind of man, but also a number of words indicative of culture (not only as re- spects their roots, but in a form stamped upon them by custom), which are the common property of the Indo- *5 Germanic family, and which cannot be explained either 73 ;4 THE GRAECO-ITALIAN STOCK. upon the principle of a uniform development in the sev- eral languages, or on the supposition of their having subsequently borrowed one from another. In this way we possess evidence of the development of pastoral life at that remote epoch in the unalterably fixed names of 5 domestic animals ; the Sanscrit gaus is the Latin bos, the Greek /3oOs ; Sanscrit avis is the Latin ovis, Greek fas ; Sanscrit a$vas, Latin equus, Greek I'TTTTOS ; Sanscrit hansas, Latin anser, Greek xfy ; Sanscrit atis, Latin anas, Greek yrjo-o-a ; in like manner, pecus, sus, porcus, ia taurus, canis, are Sanscrit words. Even at this remote period, accordingly, the stock on which, from the days of Homer down to our own time, the intellectual devel- ment of mankind has been dependent, had already advanced beyond the lowest stage of civilization, the 15 hunting and fishing epoch, and had attained at least comparative fixity of abode. On the other hand, we have as yet no certain proofs of the existence of agri- culture at this period. Language rather favors the negative view. Of the Latin-Greek names of grain, 20 none occur in Sanscrit, with the single exception of fed, which philologically represents the Sanscritj/#zw, but denotes in the Indian barley, in Greek spelt. It must indeed be granted that this diversity in the names of cultivated plants, which so strongly contrasts with 25 the essential agreement in the appellations of domestic animals, does not absolutely preclude the supposition of a common original agriculture. In the circumstances of primitive times, transport and acclimatizing are more difficult in the case of plants than of animals ; and the 30 cultivation of rice among the Indians, that of wheat and spelt among the Greeks and Romans, and that of MOMMSEN. 75 rye and oats among the Germans and Celts, may all be traceable to a common system of primitive tillage. On the other hand, the name of one cereal common to the Greeks and Indians only proves, at the most, that be- 5 fore the separation of the stocks they gathered and ate the grains of barley and spelt growing wild in Meso- potamia, not that they already cultivated grain. While, however, we reach no decisive result in this way, a fur- ther light is thrown on the subject by our observing 10 that a number of the most important words bearing on this province of culture occur certainly in Sanscrit, but all of them in a more general signification. Agras among the Indians denotes a level surface in general ; kfirnu, anything pounded ; aritram, oar and ship ; i$venas, that which is pleasant in general, particularly a pleasant drink. The words are thus very ancient ; but their more definite application to the field (ager), to the grain to be ground (granum), to the implement which furrows the soil as the ship furrows the surface of the 20 sea (aratrum), to the juice of the grape (vinum), had not yet taken place when the earliest division of the stocks occurred, and it is not to be wondered at that their subsequent applications came to be in some in- stances very different, and that, for example, the corn 25 intended to be ground, as well as the mill for grinding it (Gothic quairnus, Lithuanian girnbs), received their names from the Sanscrit kfirnu. We may accordingly assume it as probable, that the primeval Indo-Ger- inanic people were not yet acquainted with agriculture, 30 and as certain that, if they were so, it played but a very subordinate part in their economy ; for, had it at that time held the place which it afterwards held among 76 THE GR^CO-ITALIAN STOCK. the Greeks and Romans, it would have left a deeper impression upon the language. On the other hand, the building of houses and huts by the Indo-Germans is attested by the Sanscrit dam(as\ Latin domus, Greek 56/xos ; Sanscrit vfyas, Latin 5 vicus, Greek oT/cos ; Sanscrit dvaras, Latin fores, Greek 6tpa ; further, the building of oar-boats by the names of the boat Sanscrit naus, Latin navis, Greek vavs ; and of the oar, Sanscrit aritram, Greek eper^s, Latin remus, tri-res-mis ; and the use of wagons and the breaking in 10 of animals for draught and transport by the Sanscrit akshas (axle and cart), Latin axis, Greek &&v, &fjL-afr Sanscrit iugam, Latin iugum, Greek frybv. The words signifying clothing Sanscrit vastra, Latin vestis, Greek Mfc ; and sewing Sanscrit siv, Latin suo ; Sanscrit 15 nah, Latin neo, Greek ^0o>, are alike in all Indo-Ger- manic languages. This cannot, however, be equally affirmed of the higher art of weaving. The knowledge of the use of fire in preparing food, and of salt for sea- soning it, is a primeval heritage of the Indo-Germanic 20 nations ; and the same may be affirmed regarding the knowledge of the earliest metals employed as imple- ments or ornaments by man. At least, the names of copper (as) and silver (argentum), perhaps also of gold, are met with in Sanscrit, and these names can scarcely 25 have originated before man had learned to separate and to utilize the ores ; the Sanscrit asis, Latin ensis, points, in fact, to the primeval use of metallic weapons. No less do we find extending back into those times the fundamental ideas on which the development of 30 all Indo-Germanic states ultimately rests the relative position of husband and wife, the arrangement in clans, MOMMSEN. 77 the priesthood of the father of the household, and the absence of a special sacerdotal class, as well as of all dis- tinctions of caste in general, slavery as a legitimate insti- tution, the days of publicly dispensing justice at the 5 new and full moon. On the other hand, the positive or- ganization of the body politic, the decision of the ques- tions between regal sovereignty and the sovereignty of the community, between the hereditary privilege of royal and noble houses and the unconditional legal 10 equality of the citizens belong altogether to a later age. Even the elements of science and religion show traces of a community of origin. The numbers are the same up to one hundred (Sanscrit {atam, ka$atam, Latin centum, Greek e-/car6^ Gothic hund) ; and the moon re- 15 ceives her name in all languages from the fact that men measure time by her (mensis). The idea of Deity itself (Sanscrit devas, Latin deus, Greek 0e6s), and many of the oldest conceptions of religion and of natural symbol- ism, belong to the common inheritance of the nations. 20 The conception, for example, of heaven as the father, and of earth as the mother of being, the festal expedi- tions of the gods, who proceed from place to place in their own chariots along carefully levelled paths, the shadowy continuation of the soul's existence after 25 death, are fundamental ideas of the Indian as well as of the Greek and Roman mythologies. Several of the gods of the Ganges coincide even in name with those worshipped on the Ilissus and the Tiber : thus the Uranus of the Greeks is the Varunas, their Zeus, Jovis 30 pater ; Diespiter is the Djaus pita of the Vedas. An unexpected light has been thrown on many an enig- matical form in the Hellenic mythology by recent re- 78 THE GR&CO-ITALIAN STOCK. searches regarding the earlier divinities of India. The hoary, mysterious forms of the Erinnyes are no Hellenic inventions ; they were immigrants along with the oldest settlers from the East. The divine grayhound Sarama, who guards for the Lord of heaven the golden herd of 5 stars and sunbeams, and collects for Him the nourish ishing rain-clouds as the cows of heaven to the milking, and who, moreover, faithfully conducts the pious dead into the world of the blessed, becomes in the hands of the Greeks the son of Sarama, Sarameyas, or Herme- re ias ; and the enigmatical Hellenic story of the stealing of the cattle of Helios, which is beyond doubt con- nected with the Roman legend about Cacus, is now seen to be a last echo (with the meaning no longer un- derstood) of that old fanciful and significant conception 15 of nature. The task, however, of determining the degree of culture which the Indo-Germans had attained before the separation of the stocks properly belongs to the general history of the ancient world. It is, on the 20 other hand, the special task of Italian history to ascer- tain, so far as it is possible, what was the state of the Graeco- Italian nation when the Hellenes and the Ital- ians parted. Nor is this a superfluous labor ; we reach by means of it the stage at which Italian civilization 25 commenced, the starting-point of the national history. While it is probable that the Indo-Germans led a pastoral life, and were acquainted with the cereals, if at all, only in their wild state, all indications point to the conclusion that the Grasco-Italians were a grain- 30 cultivating, perhaps even a vine-cultivating, people. The evidence of this is not simply the knowledge of MOMMSEtf. 79 agriculture itself common to both, for this does not, upon the whole, warrant the inference of community of origin in the peoples who may exhibit it. An histori- cal connection between the Indo-Germanic agriculture 5 and that of the Chinese, Aramaean, and Egyptian stocks can hardly be disputed ; and yet these stocks are either alien to the Indo-Germans, or, at any rate, became separated from them at a time when agriculture was certainly still unknown. The truth is, that the o more advanced races in ancient times were, as at the present day, constantly exchanging the implements and the plants employed in cultivation ; and when the an- nals of China refer the origin of Chinese agriculture to the introduction of five species of grain that took 1 5 place under a particular king in a particular year, the story undoubtedly depicts correctly, at least in a gen- eral way, the relations subsisting in the earliest epochs of civilization. A common knowledge of agriculture, like a common knowledge of the alphabet, of war char- 20 iots, of purple, and other implements and ornaments, far more frequently warrants the inference of an ancient intercourse between nations than of their original unity. But, as regards the Greeks and Italians, whose mutual relations are comparatively well known, the hypothesis 25 that agriculture, as well as writing and coinage, first came to Italy by means of the Hellenes may be char- acterized as wholly inadmissible. On the other hand, the existence of a most intimate connection between the agriculture of the one country and that of the other 30 is attested by their possessing in common all the oldest expressions relating to it : ager, &yp6s ; aro aratrum, dp6u Uporpov ; ligo alongside of Xax^w; hortus, 80 THE GR&CO-ITALIAN' STOCJC. hordeum, KpiOtf milium, /-teX^r; ; rapa^ juaXcix??; vinum, oTvos. It is likewise attested by the agreement of Greek and Italian agriculture in the form of the plough, which appears in the same shape on the old Attic and the old Roman monuments ; in the choice 5 of the most ancient kinds of grain millet, barley, spelt ; in the custom of cutting the ears with the sickle, and having them trodden out by cattle on the smooth- beaten threshing-floor ; lastly, in the mode of preparing the grain pills, 7r6Xros ; pinso, TTT/O-O-W ; mold, p!)\i) ; for 10 baking was of more recent origin, and on that account dough or pap was always used in the Roman ritual in- stead of bread. That the culture of the vine, too, in Italy was anterior to the earliest Greek immigration, is shown by the appellation " wine-land " (Olvurpta), which 15 appears to reach back to the oldest visits of Greek voy- agers. It would thus appear that the transition from pastoral life to agriculture, or, to speak more correctly, the combination of agriculture with the earlier pastoral economy, must have taken place after the Indians had 20 departed from the common cradle of the nations, but before the Hellenes and Italians dissolved their ancient communion. Moreover, at the time when agriculture originated, the Hellenes and Italians appear to have been united as one national whole, not merely with 25 each other, but with other members of the great family ; at least, it is a fact, that the most important of those terms of cultivation, while they are foreign to the Asi- atic members of the Indo-Germanic family, are used by the Romans and Greeks in common with the Celtic as 30 well as the Germanic, Slavonic, and Lithuanian stocks. The distinction between the common inheritance of MO MM SEN. 8 1 the nations and their own subsequent acquisitions in manners and in language, is still far from having been wrought out in all the variety of its details and grada- tions. The investigation of languages with this view 5 has scarcely begun, and history still in the main derives its representation of primitive times, not from the rich mine of language, but from what must be called, for the /nost part, the rubbish-heap of tradition. For the pres- ent, therefore, it must suffice to indicate the differences 10 between the culture of the Indo-Germanic family in its earliest entireness, and the culture of that epoch when the Graeco-Italians still lived together. The task of dis- criminating the results of culture which are common to the European members of this family, but foreign to its 1 5 Asiatic members, from those which the several Euro- pean groups, such as the Graeco-Italian and the Ger- mano-Slavonic, have wrought out for themselves, can only be accomplished, if at all, after greater progress has been made in philological and historical inquiries. 20 But there can be no doubt that, with the Graeco-Ital- ians, as with all other nations, agriculture became, and in the mind of the people remained, the germ and core of their national and their private life. The house and the fixed hearth, which the husbandman constructs, in- 25 stead of the light hut and shifting fireplace of the shep- herd, are represented in the spiritual domain and idealized in the Goddess Vesta, or 'Eo-rJa, almost the only divinity not Indo-Germanic, yet from the first com- mon to both nations. One of the oldest legends of the 30 Italian race ascribes to King Italus, or, as the Italians must have pronounced the word, Vitalus, or Vitulus, the introduction of the change from a pastoral to an 6 82 THE GR&CO-ITALIAN STOCK. agricultural life, and shrewdly connects with it the original Italian legislation. We have simply another version of the same belief in the legend of the Samnite race, which makes the ox the leader of their primitive colonies, and in the oldest Latin national names which S designate the people as reapers (Siculi, perhaps also Sicani\ or as field-laborers (Opsci). It is one of the characteristic incongruities which attach to the so-called legend of the origin of Rome, that it represents a pas- toral and hunting people as founding a city. Legend IG and faith, laws and manners, among the Italians as among the Hellenes, are throughout associated with agriculture. Cultivation of the soil cannot be conceived without some measurement of it, however rude. Accordingly, 15 the measures of surface and the mode of setting off boundaries rest, like agriculture itself, on a like basis among both peoples. The Oscan and Umbrian vorsus of one hundred feet square corresponds exactly with the Greek plethron. The principle of marking off bound- 20 aries was also the same. The land-measurer adjusted his position with reference to one of the cardinal points, and proceeded to draw, in the first place, two lines, one from north to south and another from east to west, his station being at their point of intersection 25 (templum, renews, from rfyvw) then he drew, at certain fixed distances, lines parallel to these, and by this pro- cess produced a series of rectangular pieces of ground, the corners of which were marked by boundary posts (termini, in Sicilian inscriptions r^/xoves, usually fyoi). 30 This mode of defining boundaries, which is indeed also Etruscan, but is hardly of Etruscan origin, we find MOMMSEN. 83 among the Romans, Umbrians, Samnites, and also in very ancient records of the Tarentine Heracleots, who are as little likely to have borrowed it from the Italians as the Italians from the Tarentines ; it is an ancient 5 possession common to all. A peculiar characteristic of the Romans, on the other hand, was their rigid carry- ing out of the principle of the square ; even where the sea or a river formed a natural boundary, they did not accept it, but wound up their allocation of the land 10 with the last complete square. It is not solely in agriculture, however, that the especially close relationship of the Greeks and Italians appears ; it is unmistakably manifest also in the othei provinces of man's earliest activity. The Greek house, 15 as described by Homer, differs little from the model which was always adhered to in Italy. The essential portion, which originally formed the whole interior ac- commodation of the Latin house, was the atrium that is, the " blackened " chamber with the household al- 20 tar, the marriage bed, the table for meals, and the hearth ; and precisely similar is the Homeric megaron, with its household altar and hearth and smoke-begrimed roof. We cannot say the same of shipbuilding. The boat with oars was an old, common possession of the 25 Indo-Germans ; but the advance to the use of sailing vessels can scarcely be considered to have taken place during the Graeco-Italian period, for we find no nautical terms originally common to the Greeks and Italians, except such as are also general among the Indo-Ger- 30 manic family. On the other hand, the primitive Italian custom of the husbandmen having common midday meals, the origin of which the myth connects with the 84 THE GR&CO-ITALIAN STOCK. introduction of agriculture, is compared by Aristotle with the Cretan Syssitia ; and the ancient Romans further agreed with the Cretans and Laconians in tak- ing their meals not, as was afterwards the custom among both peoples, in a reclining, but in a sitting posture. 5 The method of kindling fire by the friction of two pieces of wood of different kinds is common to all peo- ples ; but it is certainly no mere accident that the Greeks and Italians agree in the appellations which they give to the two portions of the touchwood, " the ia rubber " (rptTravov, terebrd), and the " under-layer " vrdpevs, foxApa, tabula, probably from tendere, r^ra/iai). In like manner, the dress of the two peoples is essentially identical, for the tunica quite corresponds with the chiton, and the toga is nothing but a fuller himation. 15 Even as regards weapons of war, liable as they are to frequent change, the two peoples have this much at least in common, that their two principal weapons of attack were the javelin and the bow a fact which is clearly expressed, as far as Rome is concerned, in the 20 earliest names for warriors (guirites, samnites, pilumni arquites), and is in keeping with the oldest mode of fighting which was not properly adapted to a close struggle. Thus, in the language and manners of Greeks and Italians, all that relates to the material foundations 25 of human life may be traced back to the same primary elements ; the oldest problems which the world pro- poses to man had been jointly solved by the two. peo- ples at a time when they still formed one nation. It was otherwise in the spiritual domain. The great 30 problem of man how to live in conscious harmony with himself, with his neighbor, and with the whole to MOMMSEN. 85 which he belongs admits of as many solutions as there are provinces in our Father's kingdom ; and it is in this, and not \n the material sphere, that individuals and nations display their divergences of character. 5 The exciting causes which gave rise to this intrinsic contrast must have been in the Graeco-Italian period as yet wanting; it was not until the Hellenes and Italians had separated that that deep-seated diversity of mental character became manifest, the effects of which con- 10 tinue to the present day. The family and the state, religion and art, received in Italy and in Greece re- spectively a development so peculiar and so thoroughly national, that the common basis, on which in these respects also the two peoples rested, has been so over- 15 grown as to be almost concealed from our view. That Hellenic character, which sacrificed the whole to its in- dividual elements, the nation to the township, the town- ship to the citizen ; which sought the ideal of life in the beautiful and the good, and, but too often, in the 20 enjoyment of idleness; which obtained its political development by intensifying the original individuality of the several cantons, and at length produced the in- ternal dissolution of even local authority ; which in its view of religion first invested the gods with human at- 25 tributes, and then denied their existence ; which al- lowed full play to the limbs in the sports of the naked youth, and gave free scope to thought in all its grand- eur and in all its awfulness ; and that Roman charac- ter, which solemnly bound the son to reverence the 30 father, the citizen to reverence the ruler, and all to rev- erence the gods ; which required nothing and honored nothing but the useful act, and compelled every citizsn 86 THE GR^CO-ITALIAN STOCK. to fill up every moment of his brief life with unceasing work ; which made it a duty even in the boy modestly to cover the body ; which deemed every one a bad citizen who wished to be different from his fellows ; which regarded the state as all in all, and a desire for 5 the state's extension as the only aspiration not liable to censure, who can in thought trace back these sharply- marked contrasts to that original unity which embraced them both, prepared the way for their development, and at length produced them ? It would be foolish pre- IQ sumption to desire to lift this veil ; we shall only en- deavor to indicate in brief outline the beginnings of Italian nationality and its connections with an earlier period ; to direct the guesses of the discerning reader rather than to express them. 15 All that may be called the patriarchal element in the state rested in Greece and Italy on the same founda- tions. Under this head comes especially the moral and decorous arrangement of the relations of the sexes, which enjoined monogamy on the husband and visited 20 with heavy penalties the infidelity of the wife, and which recognized the equality of woman and the sanc- tity of marriage in the high position which it assigned to the mother within the domestic circle. On the other hand, the rigorous development of the marital and still 25 more of the paternal authority, regardless of the nat- ural rights of persons as such, was a feature foreign to the Greeks, and peculiarly Italian ; it was in Italy alone that moral subjection became transformed into legal slavery. In the same way, the principle of the slave's 3 being completely destitute of legal rights a principle involved in the very nature of slavery was maintained MOMMSEN. 87 by the Romans with merciless rigor and carried out to ail its consequences ; whereas among the Greeks, alle- viations of its harshness were early introduced, both in practice and in legislation, the marriage of slaves, for 5 example, being recognized as a legal relation. On the household was based the clan that is, the community of the descendants of the same progenitor ; and out of the clan, among the Greeks as well as the Italians, arose the state. But, while under the weaker LO political development of Greece the clan maintained itself as a corporate power, in contradistinction to that of the state, far even into historic times, the state in Italy made its appearance at once in complete effi- ciency, inasmuch as in presence of its authority the 15 clans were neutralized, and it exhibited an association not of clans, but of citizens. Conversely, again, the individual attained relatively to the clan an inward in- dependence and freedom of personal development far earlier and more completely in Greece than in Rome 20 a fact reflected with great clearness in the Greek and Roman proper names, which, originally similar, came to assume very different forms. In the more ancient Greek names, the name of the clan was very frequently added in an adjective form to that of the individual ; 2 5 while, conversely, Roman scholars were aware that their ancestors bore originally only one name, the later prcenomen. But, while in Greece the adjective name of the clan early disappeared, it became, among the Ital- ians generally, and not merely among the Romans, the 30 principal name; and the distinctive individual name, the pranomen, became subordinate. It seems as if the small and ever diminishing number and the meaning- 88 THE GRAECO-ITALIAN STOCK. less character of the Italian, and particularly of the Roman, individual names, compared with the luxuriant and poetical fulness of those of the Greeks, were in- tended to illustrate the truth that it was characteristic of the one nation to reduce all features of distinctive 5 personality to an uniform level, of the other freely to promote their development. The association in communities of families under patriarchal chiefs, which we may conceive to have pre- vailed in the Graeco-Italian period, may appear differ- ic ent enough from the later forms of Italian and Hellenic politics ; yet it must have already contained the germs out of which the future laws of both nations were moulded. The " laws of King Italus," which were still applied in the time of Aristotle, may denote the insti-i5 tutions essentially common to both. These laws must have provided .for the maintenance of peace and the execution of justice within the community, for military organization and martial law in reference to its external relations, for its government by a patriarchial chief, for 20 a council of elders, for assemblies of the freemen capa- ble of bearing arms, and for some sort of constitution. Judicial procedure (crimen, /c/otmv), expiation (pe of ffreefcom. EDMUND BURKE, 1720-1797. Burke's explanation of the causes of the American love of free- dom was given March 22, 1775, in tne English House of Com- mons, in the Speech on Conciliation with America, sometimes called the Speech of the Thirteen Resolutions. There Burke argued that tp do away with the discontent of the Colonies con- ciliation was better than violence. One of the things which, he said, made force useless was the fierce love of freedom among the Americans. This temper he discussed in the following bit of exposition subordinated to the general purpose of the argument. The text is that of Morley's " Universal Library," London, 1886. The selection illustrates not merely clear division of subject- matter, but unusual skill in transition from part to part. IN this character of the Americans, a love of free- dom is the predominating feature which marks and distinguishes the whole ; and as an ardent is always a jealous affection, your colonies become suspicious, 5 restive, and untractable, whenever they see the least attempt to wrest from them by force or shuffle from them by chicane, what they think the only advantage worth living for. This fierce spirit of liberty is stronger in the English colonies probably than in any other 10 people of the earth; and this from a great variety of powerful causes ; which to understand the true temper 95 96 THE AMERICAN LOVE OF FREEDOM. of their minds, and the direction which this spirit takes, it will not be amiss to lay open somewhat more largely. First, the people of the colonies are descendants of Englishmen. England, Sir, is a nation which still I 5 hope respects, and formerly adored, her freedom. The colonists emigrated from you when this part of your character was most predominant* and they took this bias and direction the moment they parted from your hands. They are therefore not only devoted to liberty, 10 but to liberty according to English ideas, and on Eng- lish principles. Abstract liberty, like other mere ab- stractions, is not to be found. Liberty inheres in some sensible object ; and every nation has formed to itself some favorite point, which by way of eminence be- 15 comes the criterion of their happiness. It happened, you know, Sir, that the great contests for freedom in this country were from the earliest times chiefly upon the question of taxing. Most of the contests in the ancient commonwealths turned primarily on the right of elec- 20 tion of magistrates ; or on the balance among the several orders of the State. The question of money was not with them so immediate. But in England it was otherwise. On this point of taxes the ablest pens and most eloquent tongues have been exercised ; the 25 greatest spirits have acted and suffered. In order to give the fullest satisfaction concerning the importance of this point, it was not only necessary for those who in argument defended the excellence of the English Constitution to insist on this privilege of granting 30 money as a dry point of fact, and to prove that the right had been acknowledged in ancient parchments EDMUND BURKE. 97 and blind usage to reside in a certain body called a House of Commons. They went much farther ; they attempted to prove, and they succeeded, that in theory it ought to be so, from the particular nature of a House 5 of Commons as an immediate representative of the people, whether the old records had delivered this oracle or not. They took infinite pains to inculcate, as a fundamental principle, that in all monarchies the people must in effect themselves, mediately or imme- lodiately, possess the power of granting their own money, or no shadow of liberty could subsist. The colonies draw from you, as with their life blood, these ideas and principles. Their love of liberty, as with you, fixed and attached on this specific point of taxing. Liberty 1 5 might be safe, or might be endangered, in twenty other particulars, without their being much pleased or alarmed. Here they felt its pulse ; and as they found that beat, they thought themselves sick or sound. I do not say whether they were right or wrong in applying 20 your general arguments to their own case. It is not easy indeed to make a monopoly of theorems and corollaries. The fact is, that they did thus apply those general arguments ; and your mode of governing them, whether through lenity or indolence, through wisdom 25 or mistake, confirmed them in the imagination, that they, as well as you, had an interest in these common principles. They were further confirmed in this pleasing error by the form of their provincial legislative assemblies. 30 Their governments are popular in a high degree ; some are merely popular ; in all, the popular representative is the most weighty ; and this share of the people in 7 98 THE AMERICAN LOVE OF FREEDOM. their ordinary government never fails to inspire them with lofty sentiments, and with a strong aversion from whatever tends to deprive them of their chief impor- tance. If anything were wanting to this necessary operation 5 of the form of government, religion would have given it a complete effect. Religion, always a principle of energy, in this new people is no way worn out or im- paired ; and their mode of professing it is also one main cause of this free spirit. The people are Pro- 10 testants; and of that kind which is the most adverse to all implicit submission of mind and opinion. This is a persuasion not only favorable to liberty, but built upon it. I do not think, Sir, that the reason of this averseness in the dissenting churches, from all that 15 looks like absolute government, is so much to be sought in their religious tenets as in their history. Every one knows that the Roman Catholic religion is at least coeval with most of the governments where it prevails ; that it has generally gone hand in hand with them, and 20 received great favor and every kind of support from authority. The Church of England too was formed from her cradle under the nursing care of regular government. But the dissenting interests have sprung up in direct opposition to all the ordinary powers of 25 the world ; and could justify that opposition only on a strong claim to natural liberty. Their very existence depended on the powerful and unremitted assertion of that claim. All Protestantism, even the most cold and passive, is a sort of dissent. But the religion most 30 prevalent in our northern colonies is a refinement on the principle of resistance ; it is the dissidence of dis- EDMUND BURKE. 99 sent, and the Protestantism of the Protestant religion. This religion, under a variety of denominations agree- ing in nothing but in the communion of the spirit of liberty, is predominant in most of the northern pro< 5 vinces, where the Church of England, notwithstanding its legal rights, is in reality no more than a sort of private sect, not composing most probably the tenth of the people. The colonists left England when this spirit was high, and in the emigrants was the highest roof all, and even that stream of foreigners, which has been constantly flowing into these colonies, has, for the greatest part, been composed of dissenters from the establishments of their several countries, and have brought with them a temper and character far from 15 alien to that of the people with whom they mixed. Sir, I can perceive by their manner, that some gen- tlemen object to the latitude of this description, because in the southern colonies the Church of England forms a large body, and has a regular establishment. It is 20 certainly true. There is, however, a circumstance at- tending these colonies, which, in my opinion, fully counterbalances this difference, and makes the spirit of liberty still more high and haughty than in those to the northward. It is, that in Virginia and the Carolinas 25 they have a vast multitude of slaves. Where this is the case in any part of the world, those who are free are by far the most proud and jealous of their freedom. Freedom is to them not only an enjoyment, but a kind of rank and privilege. Not seeing there, that freedom, 30 as in countries where it is a common blessing, and as broad and general as the air, may be united with much abject toil, with great misery, with all the exter'or gf 100 THE AMERICAN LOVE OF FREEDOM. servitude, liberty looks, amongst them, like something that is more noble and liberal. I do not mean, Sir, to commend the superior morality of this sentiment, which has at least as much pride as virtue in it ; but I cannot alter the nature of man. The fact is so ; and these 5 people of the southern colonies are much more strongly, and with a higher and more stubborn spirit, attached to liberty, than those to the northward. Such were all the ancient commonwealths ; such were our Gothic an- cestors ; such in our days were the Poles ; and such 10 will be all masters of slaves who are not slaves them- selves. In such a people, the haughtiness of domina- tion combines with the spirit of freedom, fortifies it, and renders it invincible. Permit me, Sir, to add another circumstance in our 15 colonies, which contributes no mean part towards the growth and effect of this untractable spirit. I mean their education. In no country perhaps in the world is the law so general a study. The profession itself is numerous and powerful ; and in most provinces it takes 20 the lead. The greater number of the deputies sent to the Congress were lawyers. But all who read (and most do read), endeavor to obtain some smattering in that science. I have been told by an eminent book- seller, that in no branch of his business, after tracts of 25 popular devotion, were so many books as those on the law exported to the plantations. The colonists have now fallen into the way of printing them for their own use. I hear that they have sold nearly as many of Blackstone's Commentaries in America as in England. 3 Q General Gage marks out this disposition very particu- larly in a letter on your table. He states that all thoctrfnes of JOSIAH ROYCE, 1855. The following exposition of the doctrines of Spinoza, from the end of the second lecture of Professor Josiah Royce's " The Spirit of Modern Philosophy," Boston, 1893, * s reprinted by the kind permission of the publishers, Houghton, Mifflin, and Com- pany. The beginning is abrupt, and in fact the whole extract loses somewhat, because it is wrenched from the context. Just before this the lecturer has been speaking of Spinoza's attitude toward God as one of "mystic adoration." The piece is not of a kind from which the meaning can be hastily skimmed, for the subject-matter is abstract, metaphysical, and accordingly hard to express. This difficulty, however, Pro- fessor Royce has largely overcome by the use of such concrete images as that of the circle and its diameters. The selection is interesting also as a summary of parts of Spinoza's writing. In this summary two methods, each valuable in its way, are em- ployed : that of restating the original in new words and with new illustrations ; and that of giving something of what may be called the color and effect of the original by the use of bits of quotation. V. Spinoza is n't a man of action ; his heroism, such as it is, is the heroism of contemplation. He is not always, let me tell you, in his religious mood ; and when he is not, he appears as a cynical observer of the vanity of 117 1 18 THE DOCTRINES OF SPINOZA. mortal passions. But as religious thinker, he is no cynic. Unswervingly he turns from the world of finite ' hopes and joys ; patiently he renounces every sort of worldly comfort ; even the virtue that he seeks is not the virtue of the active man. There is one good thing, 5 and that is the Infinite ; there is one wisdom, and that is to know God ; there is one sort of true love, and that is the submissive love of the saintly onlooker, who in the solitude of reflection sees everywhere an all-pervad- ing law, an all-conquering truth, a supreme and irre- 10 sistible perfection. Sin is merely foolishness ; insight is the only virtue ; evil is nothing positive, but merely the deprivation of good ; there is nothing to lament in human affairs, except the foolishness itself of every lamentation. The wise man transcends lamentation, 15 ceases to love finite things, ceases therefore to long and to be weary, ceases to strive and to grow faint, offers no foolish service to God as a gift of his own, but pos- sesses his own soul in knowing God, and therefore enters into the divine freedom, by reason of a clear 20 vision of the supreme and necessary laws of the eternal world. This, then, is the essence of Spinoza's religion. He begins his essay on the " Improvement of the Under- standing " with words that we now are prepared to com- 25 prehend. This essay and the fifth part of the ethics show us Spinoza's religious attitude and experience, elsewhere much veiled in his works. " After experi- ence had taught me," says the essay, " that all the usual surroundings of social life are vain and futile, seeing 30 that none of the objects of my fears contained in them- selves anything either good or bad, except in so far as JOSIAH RO YCE. 1 1^ the mind is affected by them, I finally resolved to in- quire whether there might be some real good which would affect the mind singly, to the exclusion of all else, whether there might be anything of which the discovery 3 and attainment would enable me to enjoy continuous, supreme, and unending happiness." Here is the start- ing-point. Life for Spinoza is in the ordinary world a vain life, because, for the first, it is our thinking that makes the things about us good or bad to us, and not 10 any real value of the things themselves, whilst the transiency, the uncertainty of these finite things brings it about that, if we put our trust in them, they will ere- long disappoint us. Rapidly, from this beginning, Spinoza rehearses the familiar tale of the emptiness of 1 5 the life of sense and worldliness, the same tale that all the mystics repeat. The reader, who has never felt this experience of Spinoza and of the other mystics, always feels indeed as if such seeming pessimism must be largely mere sour-heartedness, or else as if the expres- 20 sion of it must be pure cant. But after all, in the world of spiritual experiences, this, too, is a valuable one to pass through and to record. Whoever has not sometime fully felt what it is to have his whole world of finite am- bitions and affections through and through poisoned, 25 will indeed not easily comprehend the gentle disdain with which Spinoza, in this essay, lightly brushes aside pleasure, wealth, fame, as equally and utterly worthless. We know, indeed^ little of Spinoza's private life, but if we should judge from his words we should say that as 30 exile he has felt just this bitterness, and has conquered it, so that when he talks of vanity he knows whereof he speaks. People who have never walked in the gloomy 120 THE DOCTRINES OF SPINOZA. outlying wastes of spiritual darkness have never had the chance to find just the sort of divine light which he finally discovered there. These mystics, too, have their wealth of experience ; don't doubt their sincerity because they tell a strange tale. Don't doubt it even 5 if, like Spinoza, they join with their mysticism other traits of the wonderful Jewish character, shrewd cyni- cism, for instance. When they call pleasure and wealth and fame all dust and ashes, they possibly know whereof they speak, at least, as far as concerns themselves alone. 10 Spinoza, at any rate, twice in his life, refused, if his biographers are right, the offered chance to attain a competency. He declined these chances because, once for all, worldly means would prove an entanglement to him. He preferred his handicraft, and earned his liv- 15 ing by polishing lenses. Steadfastly, moreover, as we know, he refused opportunities to get a popular fame, and even to make a worthily great name. The chief instance is his refusal of the professorship which the Elector Palatine offered him in 1673 at Heidelberg, 20 under promise of complete freedom of teaching, and with the obvious chance of an European reputation. So Spinoza did not merely call the finite world names, as many do ; he meant his word, and he kept it. He was no sentimentalist, no emotional mystic. He was 25 cool-headed, a lover of formulas and of mathematics ; but still he was none the less a true mystic. Well, he finds the finite vain, because you have to pursue it, and then it deceives you, corrupts you, de- grades you, and in the end fails you, being but a fleet- 30 ing shadow after all. "I thus perceived," he says, " that I was in a state of great peril, and I compelled JOSIAH RO yCE. ! 2 1 myself to seek with all my strength for a remedy, how- ever uncertain it might be, as a sick man struggling with a deadly disease, when he sees that death will surely be upon him unless a remedy be found, is compelled to 5 seek such a remedy with all his strength, inasmuch as his whole hope lies therein. All the objects pursued by the multitude not only bring no remedy that tends to preserve our being, but even act as hindrances, caus- ing the death not seldom of those who possess them, 10 and always of those who are possessed by them." " All these evils," he continues, " seem to have arisen from the fact that our happiness or unhappiness has . been made the mere creature of the thing that we hap- pen to be loving. When a thing is not loved, no strife 15 arises about it ; there is no pang if it perishes, no envy if another bears it away, no fear, no hate ; yes, in a word, no tumult of soul. These things all come from loving that which perishes, such as the objects of which I have spoken. But love towards a thing eternal feasts 20 the mind with joy alone, nor hath sadness any part therein. Hence this is to be prized above all, and to be sought for with all our might. I have used the words not at random, ' If only I could be thorough in my seeking ; ' for I found that though I already saw all 25 this in mind, I could not yet lay aside avarice and pleasure and ambition. Yet one thing I found, that as long as I was revolving these thoughts, so long those desires were always behind my back, whilst I strenu- ously sought the new light ; and herein I found great 30 comfort, for I saw that my disease was not beyond hope of physic. And although at first such times were rare, and endured but for a little space, yet as more and more 122 THE DOCTRINES OF SPINOZA. the true good lighted up my mind, such times came quicker and endured longer." vr. This, then, the beginning of Spinoza's Pilgrim's Pio- gress. But now for what distinguishes him from other mystics, and makes him a philosopher, not a mere ex- ^ horter. He has his religious passion, he must reflect upon it. The passion any one might have who had passed through the dark experience of which we spoke a moment since. The philosopher must justify his faith. And how hard to justify such a faith it would seem in IQ this cold and severe seventeenth century. It was an age, you remember, when everything held to be at all occult was banished from the thoughts of the wise, and when clear thinking alone was believed in, when man, too, was held to be a mechanism, a curiously compli- 15 cated natural machine, when Hobbes, greatest amongst the English speculative thinkers of the age a writer much read by Spinoza could declare that the word " spirit " was a meaningless sound, and that nothing exists but bodies and movements. How defend a mys- 20 tical religious faith at such a moment ? Spinoza's de- fense is so ingenious, so profound, so simple, as to give us one of the most noteworthy and dramatic systems ever constructed. Once more I assure you that I here expound only one aspect of his thought. I ignore his 25 peculiar methods ; I ignore his technicalities ; I give you but the kernel of his doctrine concerning religious truth. Technicalities aside, this doctrine is essentially JOSIAH RO YCE. 1 2 3 founded upon what Spinoza regards as the axiom that everything in the world must be either explained by its own nature, or by some higher nature.* You explain a thing when you comprehend why it must be what it is. 5 Thus, for instance, in geometry you know that all the diameters of any one circle must be precisely equal, and you know that this is so, because you see why it must be so.f The diameters are all drawn in the circle and through the centre of it, and the circle has a certain 10 nature, a structure, a make, a build, whereby, for in- stance, you distinguish it from an oval or a square. This build, this make of the circle, it is that forces the diameters to be equal. They can't help being equal, being drawn through the centre of a. curve which has 1 5 no elongation, no bulge outwards in one direction more than another, but which is evenly curved all around. The nature of the circle, then, at once forces the diam- eters to be equal, pins them down to equality, hems in any rebellious diameter that should try to stretch out 20 farther than the others, and also explains to the reason of a geometer just why this result follows. My example is extremely dry and simple, but it will serve to show what Spinoza is thinking of. He says now, as some- thing self-evident, that anything in the world which 25 does n't directly contain its own explanation must be a part of some larger nature of things which does explain it, and which, accordingly, forces it to be just what it is. For instance, to use my own illustration, if two mount- ains had precisely the same height, as the diameters * See Eth. I. Axioms i. and ii. Royce. t See examples in the Tractat. de Emendat. Int. under the head of rules for definition. Rovce. 124 THE DOCTRINES OF SPINOZA. of a circle have precisely the same length, we should surely have to suppose something in the nature of the physical universe which forced just these two mountains to have the same height. But, even so, as things actu- ally are, we must suppose that whatever is or happens, 5 in case it is not a self-evident and necessary thing, must have its explanation in some higher and larger nature of things. Thus, once more, you yourself are either what you are by virtue of your own self-evident and self- made nature, or else, as is the view of Spinoza, you are 10 forced to be what you are by the causes that have pro- duced you, and that have brought you here. Cause and explanation mean for Spinoza, the same thing. He knows only rigidly mathematical necessity. Yet more, not only you, but every act, every thought of yours, each 15 quiver of your eyelashes, each least shadow of feeling in your mind, must be just as much a result of the nat- ure of things as your existence itself. Nothing comes by chance ; everything must be what it is. Could you see the world at one glance, " under the form of eter- 20 nity," you would see everything as a necessary result of the whole nature of things. It would be as plain to you that you must now have this quiver of eyelash or this shade of feeling ; it would be also as plain to you why you must have these seemingly accidental experiences, 25 as it is plain to the geometer why the evenly curved circle must forbid its diameters to be unequal. It is of the nature of reason to view things as necessary, as ex- plicable, as results either of their own nature, or, if this is n't the case, then of the higher nature of things 30 whereof they form a part. From this axiom, Spinoza proceeds, by a very short JOSIAH RO YCE. 125 but thorny road, to the thought that, if this is so, there must be some one highest nature of things, which ex- plains all reality. That such highest nature exists, he regards as self-evident. The self-explaining must, of 5 course, explain, and so make sure, its own existence. Spinoza shows by devices which I cannot here follow that there could n't be numerous self-explained and separate natures of things.* The world is one, and so all the things in it must be parts of one self-evident, 10 self-producing order, one nature. Spinoza conceives this order, describes its self-explaining and all-produc- ing character, as well as he can, and then gives it a name elsewhere well known to philosophers, but used by him in his own sense. He calls the supreme nature of things 15 the universal " Substance " of all the world. In it are we all ; it makes us what we are ; it does what its own nature determines ; it explains itself and all of us ; it is n't produced, it produces ; it is uncreate, supreme overruling, omnipresent, absolute, rational, irreversible, 20 unchangeable, the law of laws, the nature of natures; and we we, with all our acts, thoughts, feelings, life, relations, experiences are just the result of it, the con- sequences of it, as the diameters are results of the nature of a circle. Feel, hope, desire, choose, strive, 25 as you will, all is in you because this universal " sub- stance " makes you what you are, forces you into this place in the nature of things, rules you as the higher truth rules the lower, as the wheel rules the spoke, as the storm rules the raindrop, as the tide rules the wave- 30 let, as autumn rules the dead leaves, as the snowdrift * Eth. I, prop. v. ; prop. viii. schol. ii. ; props, xi. and xiv. Epist. xxxiv. (Hague edition). Royce. 26 THE DOCTRINES OF SPINOZA. rules the fallen snowflake ; and this substance is what Spinoza calls God. If you ask what sort of thing this substance is, the first answer is, it is something eternal ; and that means, not that it lasts a good while, but that no possible tern- 5 poral view of it could exhaust its nature.* All things that happen result from the one substance. This surely means that what happens now and what happened mill- ions of years ago are, for the substance, equally present and necessary results. To illustrate once more in my ia own way : A spider creeping back and forth across a circle could, if she were geometrically disposed, measure out in temporal succession first this diameter and then that. Crawling first over one diameter, she would say, "I now find this so long." Afterwards examining 15 another diameter, she would say, " It has now happened that what I have just measured proves to be precisely as long as what I measured some time since, and no longer." The toil of such a spider might last many hours, and be full of such successive measurements, 20 each marked by a spun thread of web. But the true circle itself within which the web was spun, the circle in actual space as the geometer knows it, would its nature be thus a mere series of events, a mere succes- sion of spun threads ? f No, the true circle would be 21 timeless, a truth founded in the nature of space, out- * Eth. I. def. viii. and Explicatio. Royce. t This illustration will easily be recognized as an effort at a paraphrase of Eth. II. prop. viii. corroll. and schol., a passage where, as in the illustration above used, one finds presented, but not solved, the whole problem of the true relation of finite and in- finite, temporal and eternal. Royce. JOS I AH RO YCE. 1 2 7 lasting, preceding, determining all the weary web-spin ning of this time-worn spider. Even so we, spinning our web of experience in all its dreary complications in the midst of the eternal nature of the world-embracing 5 substance, imagine that our lives somehow contain true novelty, discover for the substance what it never knew before, invent new forms of being. We fancy our past wholly past, and our future wholly unmade. We think that where we have as yet spun no web there is noth- 10 ing, and that what we long ago spun has vanished, broken by the winds of time, into nothingness. It is not so. For the eternal substance there is no before and after ; all truth is truth. " Far and forgot to me is near," it says. In the unvarying precision of its math- isematical universe, all is eternally written. " Not all your piety nor wit Can lure it back to cancel half a line, Nor all your tears wash out one word of it.'* What will be for endless ages, what has been since time began, is in the one substance completely present, as in one scroll may be written the joys and sorrows of many lives, as one earth contains the dead of countless 20 generations, as one space enfolds all the limitless wealth of figured curves and of bodily forms. This substance, then, this eternal, is Spinoza's God. In describing it I have used terms, comparisons, and illustrations largely my own. I hope that I have been 25 true to the spirit of Spinoza's thought. Remember, then, of the substance that it is absolutely infinite and self-determined ; that it exists completely and once for all ; that all the events of the world follow from it as 128 THE DOCTRINES OF SPINOZA. the nature of the diameter follows from the nature of the circle, and that as for yourself, it enfolds, over- powers, determines, produces both you and your destiny, as the storm embraces the raindrop, and as the nature of a number determines the value of its factors. Yet .S now you will ask one question more. This substance, so awful in its fatal perfection, is it, you will say, some- thing living and intelligent that I can revere, or is it something dead, a mere blind force ? Spinoza answers this question in a very original way. The substance, ic he says, must have infinitely numerous ways of express- ing itself, each complete, rounded, self-determined. It is like an infinite sacred scripture, translated into end- lessly numerous tongues, but complete in each tongue. Of these self-expressions of the substance, we mortals 15 know only two. One is the material world, Spinoza calls it body or bodily substance. The other is the inner world of thought, Spinoza calls it thinking sub- stance, or mind. These two worlds, Spinoza holds, are equally real, equally revelations of the one absolute 20 truth, equally divine, equally full of God, equally ex- pressions of the supreme order. But, for the rest, they are, as they exist here about us, mutually independent. The substance expresses itself in matter ; very well, then, all material nature is full of rigid and mathemati- 25 cal law : body moves body ; line determines line in space ; everything, including this bodily frame of ours, is an expression of the extended or corporeal aspect or attribute of the substance. In stars and in clouds, in dust and in animals, in figures and in their geometrical 30 properties, the eternal writes its nature, as in a vast hieroglyphic. Equally, however, the substance writes JOSIAH ROYCE. 129 itself in the events and the laws of mental life. And that it does so, the very existence of our own minds proves. Thought produces thought, just as body moves body, while on the other hand it is inconceivable that 5 mind should act on body, or body explain mind. And so these two orders, mental and corporeal, are precisely parallel. For neither belongs to, or is part of, or is explained by, the other. Both, then, must be equally and independently expressions of God the substance. 10 Hence, as each of the two orders expresses God's nature, each must be as omnipresent as the other. Wherever there is a body, God, says Spinoza, has a thought corresponding to that body. All nature is full of thought. Nothing exists but has its own mind, just 15 as you have your mind. The more perfect body has, indeed, the more perfect mind ; a crowbar is n't as thoughtful as a man, because in the simplicity of its metallic hardness it finds less food for thought.* But, all the same, the meanest of God's creatures has some 20 sort of thought attached to it, not indeed produced or affected in anywise by the corporeal nature of this thing, but simply parallel thereto ; an expression, in cogitative or sentient terms, of the nature of the facts here present. Well, this thought is just as real an expression of the 25 divine nature as is matter. There is just as much ne- cessity, connection, completeness, mutual interdepend- ence, rationality, eternity, in mind as in body. Of God's thought your thought is a part, just as your body is a part of the embodied substance. His thinking 30 nature produces your ideas, as his corporeal nature pro- * The illustration is my own. The thought is that of Eth. II prop. xiii. and the scholium thereto, Royce. 130 THE DOCTRINES OF SPINOZA. duces your nerves. There is, however, no real influence of body ove-r mind, or the reverse. The two are just parallel. The order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things. Just so far as your bodily life extends, so far and no further, in the